POPULATION CONTROL ALERT: Ibuprofen Is A Tool Of Agenda 21!

A study published Monday detailed the effects of the drug Ibuprofen on male fertility. The drug was shown to cause a hormonal condition in young men that is linked to infertility.

According to CNN, a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that when taking ibuprofen in doses commonly used by athletes, a small sample of young men developed a hormonal condition that typically begins, if at all, during middle age. This condition is linked to reduced fertility, which some say makes ibuprofen perfect for Agenda 21’s population control.

Joe Joseph of The Daily Sheeple says he’s been vindicated. “I feel vindicated today! A couple months back I put out a video about how ibuprofen could be a tool for Agenda 21,” said Joseph.

Joseph’s take on Agenda 21 is accurate. According to the United Nations website, Agenda 21 is meant to be “sustainable development.” But of course, it’s dictated by the elites, and one goal is to concentrate the population into megacities. People crammed together in tight quarters are easier to control and manipulate than those living more rurally.

“We’ve seen a lot of issues with this class of drugs known as NSAIDs,” says Joseph. “Sold under brands such as Advil or Motrin to help reduce swelling; to help reduce pain in people, you know, an over the counter drug. And the Consumer Health Product Association, a trade group that represents manufacturers of over the counter medications,  says that [they] ‘support and encourage continued research and promotes ongoing consumer education to help safe use of over the counter medicines.’ And they say the safety of active ingredients in these products has been well documented and supported for decades by scientific studies and real-world use.”

But what about all of those who die using NSAIDs? Is that the “real-world use” that is being referred to? NSAIDs were actually responsible for more deaths in 2012 than opioid overdoses, according to numbers gathered on Practical Pain Management’s website.

It’s also concerning that this research is simply a continuation of that which began with pregnant women. “A team of French and Danish researchers began exploring the health effects when a mother-to-be took any one of three mild pain reliever found in medicine chests. And that was Aspirin, Acetaminophen, and Ibuprofen,” said Joseph. “What they found was that…all three drugs are anti-androgenic. Meaning they disrupt male hormones and the three drugs even increase the likelihood that male babies would be born with congenital malformation [when a woman who is pregnant with a male baby takes the drugs.]” This lead to the study on adult males who have taken these three drugs, and it was discovered that ibuprofen had the strongest infertility effects.

This is not to say one shouldn’t take ibuprofen. But perhaps look into these side effects a little further and evaluate for yourself how harmful a drug could be on the body before taking it.

Japan Births Plunge To Lowest Level Ever Recorded As "Celibacy Syndrome" Takes Its Toll

Back in 2013 we asked "Why Have Young People In Japan Stopped Having Sex?" And while that might sound like nothing more than a clever headline intended for The Onion, it was prompted by a very serious survey conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association which found that 45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 and 25% of men were "not interested in or despise sexual contact"...a growing trend that has revealed itself via the nation"s persistently declining birth rates.  In fact, "celibacy syndrome" has become of such great concern for the Japanese government that it is considered a bit of a looming national catastrophe....a catastrophe that seems to be getting worse at an accelerating rate.

According to data released today by Japan"s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, child births in Japan will drop to just 941,000 in 2017, the lowest since data first started being recorded in 1899, and nearly 65% below the peak birth rate from the late 1940"s.

As the Financial Times notes today, the persistent declines in Japanese birth rates come despite the best efforts of central planners to encourage population growth via a litany of government entitlement programs aimed at helping young families cover the cost of childrearing...

The government of Shinzo Abe, prime minister, has made raising Japan’s birth rate a priority. On Friday it approved a budget that takes the first steps towards providing free pre-school, private high school and university education in an effort to reverse the trend.

 

Unless the low birth rate is reversed, the only option to increase Japan’s population would be for it to take in more immigrants. Yet despite high inflows of guest workers drawn by the strong economy, Japanese politicians have been reluctant to debate the subject.

 

Mr Abe’s government has instead set a target to raise the total fertility rate to 1.8. Officials hope the strong economy, combined with measures making it easier for women to combine work and childcare, will encourage families to have more children.

 

“We’d like to halt the decline by advancing our strategy to support children and make an easier environment for giving birth,” the ministry said.

...they"ve basically thrown in everything except a pony.

Meanwhile, Japan"s aging population means that the number of deaths will likely rise by 3% YoY in 2017 to 1.34 million, a post-World War Two high, resulting in the largest ever natural population decline of just over 400,000.   

Unfortunately, the crisis is only expected to get worse over time as projections from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research suggest the pace of population declines will accelerate and that by 2045 Japan will be losing about 900,000 residents a year.  On current trends, the population is set to fall from 126.5m to 88m by 2065 and to just 51m by 2115.

All of which means there is really only one thing left to do...instruct the BOJ to print even more money and start passing it out to expecting parents...which we"re pretty sure will solidify Haruhiko Kuroda"s official title of "biggest pimp in the world".

Millennials Have Ushered In The "Baby Bust" Cycle

Negative Population Growth, Inc., has issued a November report warning that America is no longer making enough babies to keep pace with deaths. The report blames, the ‘baby bust’ phase on the millennial generation (1980-2000), who are having children at record low rates.

Their attitudes towards marriage, procreation, and materialism changed dramatically after the Great Recession when the economies of the world came to a screeching halt. After a decade of excessive monetary policy from the Federal Reserve. The millennials have been forced to take out an excessive amount of debt such as auto loans, consumer debt, and student loans in an era of wage stagnation. This has fundamentally changed the game for millennials and perhaps changed the course of the United States. The implications of falling birth rates in a low growth economic environment coupled with massive amounts of debt - is a perfect storm that will lead to the next crisis. 

Falling birth rates in the United States have been classified of what some call the ‘baby bust’. Like any bubble, there must be a bust cycle and when it comes to births in the United States — that time, is now. According to the report, some demographers are “freaked out by the falling birth rate, an occupational hazard for people who spend their professional lives scrutinizing population statistics”. As the demographic winds shift, the United States is preparing for a ‘Japanification’ period of lower birth rates and a much old generation to strain the economic and healthcare systems.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of babies born declined by 338,000 or 8.7% between 2007 and 2016. Over the period, the national fertility rate declined from 69.3 to a historic low of 62.0 in 2016. For more color, the peak was in 1960 at 118 after World war II, ever since it’s been in decline.

As a result, the national fertility rate (all ages) broke a bearish flag (chart below) and fell -11% between 2007 and 2016. To keep pace with deaths, moms need to have 2.1 births, but that is not the case today with 1.8.

“The fertility rate decline is driven entirely by millennial mothers in their teens and twenties,” said the report.

 

“Birth rates for all age groups of women under 30 fell to record lows in 2016,” it added.

Besides poor economic conditions and a transitioning economy, the report added the increased “availability and effectiveness of sex education and contraceptives for males and females” have played a large role in reducing the birth rate for millennials.

Despite demographers freaking about out by the falling birth rates, the report offers an insight into how others are dealing with the negative trend,

Economists, however, have made peace with the notion that a shrinking population is not necessarily a bad thing. While GDP may slow, a better measure of the country’s economic health – GDP per capita – can benefit.

 

This is especially relevant in a world where robots, AI, and other technologies threaten the jobs of many Americans

The United States is not alone in the demographic shift of less birth rates, as it’s evident below. Major developed economies and emerging growth economies are feeling similar pain.

The report says “we have been here before” relating today’s economic-stress to the 1930s and the late 1970s coinciding with ultra low brith rates for the younger generation. Interesting enough, the report asks: Is it different this time? 

As the paper suggests– it is different and millennials are increasingly delaying kids or just outright abandoning altogether.

The report lists four reasons why this time is different:

• A 2016 study of Census data from Pew Research found nearly one-third of young adults (ages 18-34) live with their parents, slightly more than the proportion that live with a spouse or partner. Not since record keeping began in 1880 has living at home for this age group outpaced living with a spouse. “They’re concentrating more on school, careers and work and less focused on forming new families, spouses or partners and children,” Richard Fry, lead author of the Pew report, said of millennials. Although student debt is often blamed, it may not be the dominant factor: the trend is stronger for those without a college education.


• When it comes to marriage, millennials say “I don’t” more than any previous generation. Research by the Urban Institute finds that if current trends continue, 30.7% of millennial women will remain single by age 40, approximately twice the share of their Gen-X counterparts. The data show similar trends for males. Marriage rates fell drastically during the Great Recession, but they had been declining for years prior to that event. At this point even a return to pre-recession levels will not prevent marriage rates among millennial women from falling below those of Gen-Xers by age 40.4 Ironically, the aversion of millennial females to marriage may reflect their economic strength vis a vis males: “Sharp declines in the earning power of non-college males combined with the economic self-sufficiency of women — rising educational attainment, falling gender gap and greater female control over fertility choices — have reduced the economic value of marriage for women.”


• A cross-generational study conducted at Wharton School of Business found more than half (58%) of millennial female undergraduates do not plan to have children. That is nearly three-times the 22% of Gen-X female undergraduates who did not want children when surveyed in 1992. Results were similar for male students. (The researchers compared surveys of the Wharton graduating class of 1992 and 2012.) While Gen-X women felt “motherhood fulfilled their need to help others” millennial females believe they can serve the greater need by succeeding at work. For millennial men “doing good” is increasingly connected to creating greater balance between work and family. Not surprisingly, they are less likely to think of themselves as the sole breadwinner. Even millennials who do want children say they do not see a clear path toward it.


• Immigrants are the wild card. They account for 15% of U.S. millennials, up from 6% of the prior generation.8 Although birth rates for foreign-born millennials are generally above those of native-born, a recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies finds that the gap is narrowing.9 From 2008 to 2015: birth rates for foreign-born women ages 15 to 19 fell 50.6% versus a 43% drop for native-born in that age cohort; birth rates for immigrant women 20 to 24 fell 40.5% versus a 28.5% decline for native-born. The Total Fertility Rate – a measure of the number of children a woman can be expected to have in her lifetime based on current patterns – fell 21.5% for immigrant women and 15.4% for native-born women over that period. The implication is clear: When it comes to family size, immigrant millennials have embraced the “smaller is better” ethos of the larger, native-born millennial community. That is good news to those of us who believe a smaller population is in the national interest.

Welcome to the new normal: Millennials will be the first generation that the American dream will most likely not be attainable, as show on the home ownership rate below. Since the real estate boom of the 2000s, homeownership rate for people under thirty-five has literally fallen off a cliff.  The report explores a number of factors of why this trend exists: student debt and the lingering impact of the Great Recession… 

Another new normal: With the introduction of Uber and Lyft fewer millennials are driving– leading to a shake up in the auto industry. The conventional wisdom among automakers are that millennials will unlock a new tranche of demand, but that narrative is going cold as the sharing economy disrupts.

Meanwhile, General Mills in 2016 ran a national advertising campaign targeting the millennial generation titled: ‘make more babies’… The type of conditioning is self-evident of one large corporation that is clearly aware of the low birth rate trend.

The Washington Examiner sums it all up,

The report explains the shift to smaller families is driven by the poor economy, broken American Dream, and job losses millennials witnessed growing up. 

 

Europe Is Committing Demographic Suicide

This week, yet another Islamic terrorist attack targeted the Spanish city of Barcelona. As it was for many years under Muslim rule, it is, therefore, like Israel, land which many Islamists believe they are entitled to repossess.

At the same time, far from Spain, elementary schools have been closing, shuttered by the state after the number of children dropped to less than 10% of the population. The government is converting these structures into hospices, providing care for the elderly in a country where 40% of the people are 65 or older. That is not a science-fiction novel. That is Japan, the world"s oldest and most sterile nation, where there is a popular expression: "ghost civilization".

According to Japan"s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, by 2040 most of the country"s smaller cities will see a dramatic drop of one-third to one-half of their population. Due to a dramatic demographic decrease, many Japanese councils can no longer operate and have been closed. Restaurants have decreased from 850,000 in 1990 to 350,000 today, pointing to a "drying up of vitality". Predictions also suggest that in 15 years, Japan will have 20 million empty houses. Is that also the future of Europe?

Among the experts in demography, there is a tendency to call Europe "the new Japan". Japan, however, is dealing with this demographic catastrophe with its own resources, and banning Muslim immigration to the country.

"Europe is committing demographic suicide, systematically depopulating itself in what British historian Niall Ferguson has called "the greatest sustained reduction in European population since the Black Death in the fourteenth century"", as George Weigel recently noted.

Europe"s Muslims appear to be dreaming of filling this vacuum. The Archbishop of Strasbourg, Luc Ravel, nominated by Pope Francis in February, recently declared that "Muslim believers know very well that their fertility is such today, that they call it ... the Great Replacement. They tell you in a very calm, very positive way: "One day all this, all this will be ours" ...".

A new report by the Italian think tank Centro Machiavelli just revealed that if current trends continue, by 2065 first- and second-generation immigrants will exceed 22 million persons, or more than 40% of Italy"s total population. In Germany, as well, 36% of children under the age of five are being born to immigrant parents. In 13 of the 28 EU member countries, more people died than were born last year; without migration, the populations of Germany and Italy are expected to decline by 18% and 16%, respectively.

The impact of demographic free-fall is most visible in what was once called the "new Europe", the countries of the former Soviet bloc such as Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, to distinguish these from the so called "old Europe", France and Germany. Those Eastern countries are now the ones most exposed to the "depopulation bomb", the devastating collapse in birth rate that the current-events analyst and author Mark Steyn has called "the biggest issue of our time".

The New York Times asked why, "despite shrinking population, Eastern Europe resists accepting migrants". The shrinking demography is precisely the reason they fear being replaced by migrants. In addition, much of Eastern Europe has already experienced being occupied by Muslims for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire, and are all too well aware what would be in store for them were they to come there again. Aging countries fear the antipathetic values sure to appear if there were a replacement by the current young foreign population.

"There are two distinct views in Europe today to consider [regarding the decline and aging of the population]", Hungary"s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently said. "One of these is held by those who want to address Europe"s demographic problems through immigration. And there is another view, held by Central Europe – and, within it, Hungary. Our view is that we must solve our demographic problems by relying on our own resources and mobilising our own reserves, and – let us acknowledge it – by renewing ourselves spiritually". Orbán just warned against a "Muslimized Europe". According to him, "the question of the upcoming decades is whether Europe will continue to belong to Europeans".

Hungary"s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently said: "Our view is that we must solve our demographic problems by relying on our own resources and mobilising our own reserves, and... by renewing ourselves spiritually". (Image source: David Plas/Wikimedia Commons)

Africa is also pressing Europe with a demographic time bomb. According to Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders:

"In the coming 30 years, the number of Africans will grow by more than one billion people. That is twice the population of the entire European Union... The demographic pressure will be enormous. One-third of the Africans want to move abroad, and many want to come to Europe. Last year, over 180,000 people crossed in shabby boats from Libya. And this is just the beginning. According to EU Commissioner Avramopoulos, at his very moment, 3 million migrants are waiting to enter Europe".

Eastern Europe is thinning out. Demography has even become a problem for Europe"s security. There are fewer people to serve in Europe"s military and social welfare posts. The President of Bulgaria, Georgi Parvanov, has, in fact, called on the country"s leaders to attend a meeting of the national Consultative Committee entirely devoted to the problem of national security. Once Eastern European countries feared Soviet tanks; now, they fear empty cradles.

The United Nations estimated that there were about 292 million people in Eastern Europe last year, 18 million fewer than in the early 1990s. The number is equivalent to the disappearance of the entire population of the Netherlands.

The Financial Times had called this situation in Eastern Europe "the largest loss of population in modern history". Its population is shrinking as has no other before. Not even the Second World War, with its massacres, deportations and population movements, had come to that abyss.

Orbán"s way -- dealing with a demographic decline using the country"s own resources -- is the only way for Europe to avoid Archbishop"s Ravel"s prediction of a "great replacement". Mass immigration will most likely fill those empty cradles -- but Europe will then become also just a becomes a "ghost civilization"; it is just a different kind of suicide.

*  *  *

APPENDIX

Romania will lose 22% of its population by 2050, followed by Moldova (20%), Latvia (19%), Lithuania (17%), Croatia (16%) and Hungary (16%). Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine are the countries where the population decline will be most severe. Poland"s population is estimated to decrease by 2050 to 32 million from the current 38 million. Nearly 200 schools have closed, but there are enough children to fill the remaining ones.

In Central Europe, the proportion of "over 65s" increased by more than one-third between 1990 and 2010. The Hungarian population is at its lowest point in half a century. The number of people fell from 10,709,000 in 1980 to the current 9,986,000 million. In 2050, there will be fewer than 8 million people in Hungary; and one in three will be over the age of 65. Hungary today has a fertility rate of 1.5 children per woman. If you exclude the Roma population, this figure drops to 0.8, the lowest in the world -- the reason Prime Minister Orbán announced new measures to solve the demographic crisis.

Bulgaria will have the fastest population decline in the world between 2015 and 2050. Bulgaria is part of a group that is expected to decrease by more than 15% between 2015 to 2050, along with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. Bulgaria"s population of about 7.15 million people is estimated to fall to 5.15 million in 30 years -- a decline of 27.9%.

Official figures show that 178,000 babies were born in Romania. By comparison, in 1990, the first post-Communist year, there were 315,000 births. Croatia last year had 32,000 births, a decline of 20% from 2015. The depopulation of Croatia could come to more than 50,000 people each year.

When the Czech Republic was part of the Communist bloc (as part of Czechoslovakia), its total fertility rate was conveniently close to the replacement rate (2.1). Today it is the fifth most barren country in the world. Slovenia has the highest GDP per capita in Eastern Europe, but an extremely low fertility rate.

America's Fertility Rate Falls To Record Low

The US isn"t yet grappling with the economic disaster that is a shrinking popuation - unlike Japan. Though it"s starting to look like a not-too-distant possibility. US birthrates fell to yet another historic low in 2016 as a whirlwind of economic and cultural factors inspire more women to delay, or forgo, having children. According to provisional data for the fourth quarter provided by the CDC, the US birthrate has declined to 62 births per 1000 women – its lowest level on record, and down from 62.5 in 2015.

This is especially troubling because demographers worry that a dwindling birth rate will hurt economic growth and tax revenues needed to fund transfer payments to a growing elderly population, as more members of the baby boomer generation age into retire.

The CDC did not say why the birth rate is declining. But according to Axios, research and surveys have shown several reasons, including wider availability of birth control, personal economic instability from student loans or other debt, women focused on launching a career before starting a family, and a growing acceptance that not everyone wants to have children.

If the Trump administration achieves higher economic growth, it’s unlikely to do so fast enough to support the mandated 9% increase in entitlement spending for older Americans without more deficit spending. Trump says he intends to preserve Social Security and Medicare spending levels.

The highest birthrates are now seen among women aged 30-34. Previously, the highest rate had been for women aged 25-29, which fell to 101.9 in 2016.

Chart courtesy of Axios

Furthermore, as Statista notes, teenage pregnancy is in continual decline in the United States. As preliminary data released in a newreport by the National Centre for Health Statistics on Friday reveals, the birth rate of mothers in the 15-19 age group dropped to a record low of 20.3, amounting to 209,480 births in 2016. Compared to 2015, this is a decrease of almost 9% and even 62% when compared to 1996.

Conversely, birth rates of women aged 40-44 are on the rise: While it stood at 6.8 in 1996, the provisional birth rate for this age group is 11.4 births per 1,000 women in 2016, which accounts for an increase of 4% compared to the previous year.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Here are a few other interesting data points from the CDC, courtesy of Axios:

• The CDC estimates the fertility rate in 1960 was about 118 births per 1,000 women, or almost double what it is today.


• Despite the record low birth rate, more than 3.94 million babies were born in 2016, which was about 37,000 fewer than 2015.


• The highest birth rate is now among women aged 30-34 at 102.6 births per 1,000 women. Previously, the highest rate had been for women aged 25-29, which fell to 101.9 in 2016.


• U.S. births by race origin of the mother: 52% white, 23% Hispanic, 14% black, 6% Asian, 1% Native American/native of Alaska, Hawaii or Pacific Islands.

* * *

Economists worry that if birthrates continue to decline, America’s economy will enter a period of stagnant growth like that experienced by Japan over the past two decades. As we reported last year, the problem of falling fertility in Japan, which at 1.4 births per woman, has one of the lowest fertility rate in the developed world, is so severe, that Japan"s lawmakers have decided to take action.  Late last year, Japan’ cabinet approved a record $830 billion spending budget for fiscal 2017, which includes child-rearing support. However, the birth rate in the US remains positive, while Japan"s population is shrinking.

However, at this rate, the local population may not need the free money in the not too distant future. The only hope, as in the case of many European nations, is that a surge in immigration will offset the natural decline of the domestic population, whose average age has never been higher...

Greeks Need To Start Having Babies Again Or Face Financial Oblivion

Authored by Narjas Zatat via Indy100.com,

People in Greece can’t afford to have more than one child, and many are opting to have none at all.

Fertility doctor Minas Mastrominas tells the New York Times that some women have decided not to conceive, and single-child parents have been asking him to destroy their remaining embryos.

He said:

After eight years of economic stagnation, they’re giving up on their dreams.

It isn’t just Greece suffering low birth rates. In fact the trend spreads to most of Europe, with Spain, Portugal and Italy also reporting dangerously low rates.

(Picture: Jakub Marian)

Why is this happening?

Unemployment continues to be a serious issue in Greece. Rates are slightly lower than in 2016 when they were 23.9 per cent, but are still very high at 23.5 per cent.

The slump has affected women more, with unemployment rates at 27 per cent compared to 20 per cent of men.

Child tax breaks and subsidies for large families have decreased, and the country stands at having to lowest budget in the EU for family and child benefits.

 

Women in the workforce.

During the height of the crisis, women postponed childbirth in favour of working. As the years dragged on, the rate of fertility decreased, making it biologically more difficult to conceive.

Additionally, gender equality came to a standstill, and many women of ‘childbearing age’ were denied employment, or had their contract changed to part time involuntarily, as soon as they got pregnant. 

What is the impact of low birth rates?

One of the most prominent areas that will be detrimentally affected is pensions and the welfare system. 

Additionally, according to Eurostat, such low birth rates – under 2.1 – could create a demographic disaster.

This will have a knock-on effect on pensions, with fewer young people working. 

Reduced pensions for grandparents, who traditionally took care of the family"s children means that parents will have to reach into their dwindling budget in order to pay for child care.

All of these circumstances provides an unwelcoming environment for having children, creating a spiralling drop in birth rates.

HT The New York Times

Japan's Demographic Time Bomb Keeps Ticking

Via Daniel Mitchell of The Foundation for Economic Education,

When I warn about the fiscal and economic consequences of America’s poorly designed entitlement programs (as well as the impact of demographic changes), I regularly suggest that the United States is on a path to become Greece.

Because of Greece’s horrible economy, this link has obvious rhetorical appeal.

But there’s another nation that may be a more accurate “role model” of America’s future. This other country, like the United States, is big, relatively rich, and has its own currency.

For these and other reasons, in an article for The Hill, I suggest that Japan is the nation that may offer the most relevant warning signs. I explain first that Japan shows the failure of Keynesian economics.

…ever since a property bubble burst in the late 1980s, Japan’s economy has been in the doldrums, and its politicians deserve much of the blame. They’ve engaged in repeated binges of so-called Keynesian stimulus. But running up the national credit card hasn’t worked any better in Japan than it did for President Barack Obama. Instead of economic rejuvenation, Japan is now saddled with record levels of debt.

In other words, Japan already is a basket case and may be the next Greece. And all this foolish policy has been cheered on by the IMF.

I then highlight how Japan shows why a value-added tax is a huge mistake.

Japan’s politicians also decided to impose a value-added tax (VAT) on the nation. As so often happens when a VAT gets adopted, it turns into a money machine, as legislators start ratcheting the rate higher and higher. That happened in Europe back in the 1960s and 1970s, and it’s happening in Japan today.

And regular readers know my paranoid fear of the VAT taking hold in the United States.

But here’s the main lesson in the column.

The combination of demographic changes and redistribution programs is a recipe for fiscal crisis.

…the biggest economic threat to the country is the way Japan’s welfare state interacts with demographic changes. It’s not that the welfare state is enormous, particularly compared with European nations, but the system is becoming an ever-increasing burden because the Japanese people are living longer and having fewer children. …America faces some of the same problems. …if we don’t reform our entitlement programs, it’s just a matter of time before we also have a fiscal crisis.

To be sure, as I note in the article, Japan’s demographic outlook is worse. And that nation’s hostility to any immigration (even from high-skilled people) means that Japan can’t compensate (as America has to some degree) for low birth rates by expanding its population.

Indeed, the demographic situation in Japan is so grim that social scientists have actually estimated the date on which the Japanese people become extinct.

Mark August 16, 3766 on your calendar. According to…researchers at Tohoku University, that’s the date Japan’s population will dwindle to one. For 25 years, the country has had falling fertility rates, coinciding with widespread aging. The worrisome trend has now reached a critical mass known as a “demographic time bomb.” When that happens, a vicious cycle of low spending and low fertility can cause entire generations to shrink — or disappear completely.

Though I guess none of us will know whether this prediction is true unless we live another 1750 years. But it doesn’t matter if the estimate is perfect. Japan’s demographic outlook is very grim.

By the way, the problem of aging populations and misguided entitlements exists in almost every developed nation.

But I mentioned in the article for The Hill that there are two exceptions. Hong Kong and Singapore have extremely low birthrates and aging populations. But neither jurisdiction faces a fiscal crisis for the simple reason that people largely are responsible for saving for their own retirement.

And that, of course, is the main lesson. The United States desperately needs genuine entitlement reform. While I’m not overflowing with optimism about Trump’s view on these issues, hope springs eternal.

Demographic Panic: China Considering 'Birth Rewards' to Encourage Citizens to Have More Babies

This will be the biggest challenge for developed nations over the next hundred years: depopulation.

Expect strange things to happen in the western world and developed nations in Asia over the next fifty years --  marked by unusual foreign policy moves --  and a craven, almost desperate clamoring for middle eastern, south american and african migrants to replace their withering and decadent societies.

Why?

Credit expansion, or at a minimum, stasis.

Due to one of the lowest birth rates in the world (1.5p per family), thanks to the one child policy, China is now considering offering incentives to its citizens to get out there and "screw for China", a la Denmark.

Source: Reuters

The potential move was revealed by Wang Peian, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission at a social welfare conference on Saturday, the newspaper said on Tuesday.
 
Birth rates rose to 17.86 million in 2016, the highest level since 2000, after the country issued new guidelines in late 2015 allowing all parents to have two children amid growing concerns over the costs of supporting an aging population.
 
"That fully met the expectations, but barriers still exist and must be addressed," Wang was quoted as saying.
 
"To have a second child is the right of each family in China but affordability has become a bottleneck that undermines the decision."
 
A poll conducted by the commission in 2015 found that 60 percent of families surveyed were reluctant to have a second baby largely due to financial constraints.
 
China"s birth rate, one of the world"s lowest, is fast becoming a worry for authorities, rather than the achievement it was considered at a time when the government feared over-population.
 
China began implementing its controversial "one-child policy" in the 1970s in order to limit population growth, but authorities are now concerned that the country"s dwindling workforce will not be able to support an increasingly aging population.

 
Elon Musk has been an outspoken advocate about depopulation and "population implosion".

Watch:

By 2050, India will surpass China in population -- essentially leveling China"s population flat for the next 33 years.

The deleterious effect upon China"s demographic trends was predicted by Brookings Institute in 2010 -- saying its "dividend growth rate" would erode to the point that by 2013 it would hamper economic growth. This is not only a Chinese problem, mind you, but a developed world problem. Both Japan and Italy is expected to lose half its population over the next 40 years -- based on current trends. If this persists, what do you think this will do to global GDP?
 

 
Looks legit to me.
 
Source: Brookings Institute (2010)

By 2013 China’s demographic dividend growth rate will turn negative: That is, the growth rate of net consumers will exceed the growth rate of net producers. Starting in 2013, such a negative growth rate will reduce the country’s economic growth rate by at least half a percentage point per year. Between 2013 and 2050, China will not fare demographically much better than Japan or Taiwan, and will fare much worse than the United States and France.
 
As a result of China’s very low fertility over the past two decades, the abundance of young, inexpensive labor is soon to be history. The number of workers aged 20 to 29 will stay about the same for the next few years, but a precipitous drop will begin in the middle of the coming decade. Over a 10-year period, between 2016 and 2026, the size of the population in this age range will be reduced by about one-quarter, to 150 million from 200 million. For Chinese aged 20 to 24, that decline will come sooner and will be more drastic: Over the next decade, their number will be reduced by nearly 50 percent, to 68 million from 125 million.
 
Such a drastic decline in the young labor force will usher in, for the first time in recent Chinese history, successive shrinking cohorts of labor force entrants. It will also have profound consequences for labor productivity, since the youngest workers are the most recently educated and the most innovative.
 
As the young population declines, domestic demand for consumption may weaken as well, since young people are also the most active consumers of everything from wedding banquets to new cars and housing units. And because China is a major player in the global economy, the impact of the country’s demographic changes will not be limited by its borders.
 
Fragile families, fragile society
 
So far, observers of China’s demographic changes have focused most of their attention on consequences at the aggregate or societal level: the size of the labor force, of the elderly population, and of the number of men who will not be able to marry. Worries at this level of analysis generally relate to the country’s future economic growth and social stability. But the challenges that China will face as a result of its changing demographics go far beyond economic growth and other aggregate concerns.
 
China’s unprecedented population control policy, the one-child policy, turned 30 this year. It has forcefully altered the family and kin structure of hundreds of millions of Chinese families. And families, in addition to their other functions, are first and foremost the primary source of support for dependents, the young and the elderly.
 
Although the full extent of the one-child policy’s societal consequences will not be known until later, it is safe to predict that the social costs that China will need to pay, especially in terms of family support for aging parents, will be exceedingly high. In no small part due to implementation of the one-child policy, China by 2005 had accumulated nearly 160 million only children aged 0 to 30. That number has further grown in the past five years. These figures imply that over 40 percent of Chinese households have only one child.
 
More generally, ever more Chinese parents in the future will not be able to count on their children in their old age. And many parents will face a most unfortunate reality: outliving their children and therefore dying alone. Given the current mortality schedule, the likelihood that an 80-year-old Chinese man will see his 55-year-old son die before he does is 6 percent. Because women live longer, the likelihood that an 80-year-old woman will outlive her 55-year-old son is 17 percent.
 
Because of China’s continued mortality decline, and especially its sustained fertility decline to below replacement levels, the country has effectively entered an era of population decline.China’s current TFR of 1.5 implies that, in the long run, each future generation will be 25 percent smaller than the one preceding it. China’s population is still growing, albeit very slowly, because the country still has a relatively young age structure, which produces more births than deaths, even though on average each couple has fewer than two children. Had it not been for China’s relatively young age structure, the population would have begun declining in the early 1990s, almost two decades ago. The current growth, in other words, is a result of population momentum.
 
The same force of momentum will work in the opposite direction soon. Given current mortality and fertility rates, and with a population age structure that is growing increasingly older, the number of deaths will soon exceed the number of births. China’s population is likely to peak less than 15 years from now, below a maximum of 1.4 billion. After that will come a prolonged, even indefinite, population decline and a period of accelerated aging.
 
Even if China can restore fertility to replacement level within 10 years after the country reaches its population peak, population will still exhibit a decline nearly half a century long, with a net population loss of over 200 million, if not more. The median age of the Chinese population, at its peak, could be as high as 50 years.
 
China is by no means unique in experiencing below-replacement fertility. In the past decade, below-replacement fertility has become a new global reality. Whereas in some parts of the world high fertility rates continue to pose severe challenges to women and children’s health, for more than half of the world’s population, below replacement fertility is now the norm.
 
In Europe, North America, and East Asia, prolonged below-replacement fertility has already set in motion a negative population growth momentum.In the most extreme cases, such as Italy and Japan, population could be reduced by half in as few as 40 years or so if current rates of reproduction persist. A gradual but substantial reduction in population, especially with a concomitant aging of populations in the world’s richest countries, constitutes an unprecedented shift that is redefining the global demographic, economic, and political landscape.
 
What makes China unique, however, is that it still has a state policy, unique in human history, that restricts the majority of Chinese families to one child per couple. At the time the policy was announced 30 years ago, it provoked great controversy both within and outside China; over the years it has extracted great sacrifices from Chinese families and individuals, especially from women. And although the policy was designed as an emergency measure to slow down China’s population growth, and was intended to last for only one generation, the government has not yet shown the willingness, or courage, to phase it out.
 
China’s slow recognition and inaction in the face of its impending demographic crisis—inaction that persists despite appeals by almost all the country’s population experts to phase out the one child policy quickly—reflect policy makers’ lack of understanding of the changing demographic reality. Inertia also results from the resistance of the country’s birth-control bureaucracy, which formally employs half a million people.
 
This exemplifies a characteristic feature of China’s regime—relegating difficult, long-term, structural challenges to the back burner, while giving priority to short-term crisis management and concerns about stability. The looming demographic crisis will largely define China in the twenty-first century. Given that demographic changes take time to develop, and that their ramifications are not only massive but also long-lasting, China’s inaction has already proved costly—and will only grow more so the longer it persists.

 
In the words of the immortal Bill the Butcher, "this is a kill."
 
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

Why Social Security Is Doomed: “Birthrate At Lowest Level on Record”… And the Future Is Unfunded

Here’s more evidence that the “recovery” never really happened, and good reason to think that the entire social net structure is doomed to fall apart.

The birthrate, long tied to economic growth, has been dropping to its lowest point in recorded history – both nationally and, in particular, in the state of California.

This demographic shift is bad news for the economy – in terms of housing, consumer markets, and especially for the long-term funding of social security, medicaid, medicare and other obligations that younger generations have typically been expected to pay into.

Whether or not you agree with the system in place, the fact that it is virtually certain to go bankrupt before the generation of baby boomers shift off this mortal coil should be troubling to everyone planning a future in the United States.

Official numbers show that the birthrate began to steadily decline in 2008 when the crisis hit and – unlike even during the Great Depression – hasn’t ever picked back up. 2016 saw the lowest point ever for California, even with higher births from immigrants factored in.

via the L.A. Times:

California’s birthrate dropped to its lowest level ever in 2016, according to data released by the state’s Department of Finance.

Between July 2015 and July of this year, there were 12.42 births per 1,000 Californians, the agency said this week. The last time the birthrate came close to being that low was during the Great Depression, when it hit 12.6 per 1,000 in 1933.

But, unlike after the Depression, birthrates haven’t bounced back quickly as the economy has picked up.

California has been experiencing a years-long downward trend that likely stems from the recession, a drop in teenage pregnancies and an increase in people attending college and taking longer to graduate, therefore putting off having children…

“Eventually you think about having a child and by this point in time you’re in your early 30s,” he said… when women’s fertility begins to decrease…

Similarly, the national birthrate began falling in 2008 and continued to do so through 2013, when it hit a record low of 12.4 per 1,000 people.

Already, states and cities are unable to meet their pension obligations. A very bad game of musical chairs is in the works, and unless something major changes, it could spell ruin for aging generations to come, who will be forced to contend with a shrinking pool of support – both officially and unofficially – from younger generations.

As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year:

Sales of single-family homes are being weighed down by what Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders, calls “the great delay,” the trend of millennials postponing milestones like marriage and having kids. Other ripple effects take years to show up, such as the drag of having fewer young workers paying into Social Security and Medicare…

[…]

“Everything is slower than we expected,” said Sam Sturgeon… he predicts that the total fertility rate won’t go above 1.9 babies per woman for the next five years or longer. An ideal birth rate is around 2.1 babies per woman, demographers say, since that’s the rate that’s needed to replace the current levels of population.

Right now, there is considerable optimism about a renewed age for the free market in America. Business is being wooed back by President-elect Trump.

But in the long term, the demographic pressures could impact the care and survival of the population. All the more reason to prepare for the worst, and reduce one’s dependency on the system as much as possible.

As Michael Snyder explained, the upcoming generation of “snowflake” millenials are, as whole, reluctant to move out of their parent’s basements, have difficulty finding real jobs, are stifled by student loans and a lifetime of debt, are putting off marriage and children – and consequently, will be inadequately prepared to financial support older generations as they age.

What if social security and pensions aren’t there when you need it? What if, even after being forced to pay for Obamacare, health care is adequate or even inaccessible?

At the individual level, this is a clear incentive to prepare, and attempt to build a self-sufficient life that is not reliant on social programs or future-promises of assistance and support.

Promote your own health, and that of your family, and create a back-up plan in case one’s position in the pecking order of society should slip and fall, income should fade or medicines and health care should become out-of-reach.

The same tips to prepare for an emergency can be applied to the long game to prepare for a future of bankrupt and inept social services.

Read more:

Billionaire: “We Are Destroying the Middle Class. That’s What Keeps Me Awake at Night.”

Overpopulation? Economic Ripple Effect From Fewer Babies: “Market Is Not Going to Grow”

“There Will Be Life Altering Ramifications For Those Who Can’t Or Won’t Adapt To New Realities”

Terminal Economy: “Private Sector Will NEVER Recover…This Time, Replacing Humans Altogether”

In the Robotic Near-Future, Most “Will Live Off Government-Provided Income”