The Speculist

On the demographics issue, I doubt things are quite as bleak as Steyn makes out. Birthrates have moved both down and up in the US and there's no reason why they can't in Europe, too. Anyway, if Americans do keep churning people out, and Europeans do keep slowing down, I wonder if we won't eventually see a little bit of "reverse colonization?"* If European countries could figure out a good set of incentives for coming over, American immigrants would be an excellent asset. Americans tend to have more in common with Europeans than most of the folks they are currently bringing in -- the most significant one being that whole "liberal pluralist democracy" thing.

Sure, there are important differences. And there's no question that many Europeans would see a wave of Americans moving in as a threat -- while few currently seem to recognize the threat that their current immigration policies represent. But Americans believe in cultural assimilation and the melting pot. American immigrants to Europe could quickly become as German or French or Italian as their neighbors, while still being American -- the way Italian Americans are fully American and also still very much Italian.

It could work. It's an untried model for Americans. We were immigrants coming in, but going out we've always been expatriates.

* Obviously, it would need a better name than that. How about "right of return?" No, that's no good either...

The Japanese government has spent billions on developing a home health care robot as there will be no one to care for their elderly. America will be a big beneficiary of this research.

We in the US have the same problem as no one wants to take a job taking care of the elderly. Robots will enable people stay independent much longer before they have to go into a very expensive nursing home. Thus Robots will enable us to lower the cost of medicare.

Will the generation retiring today accept robot care? Some will especially if they have had experience with computers. And for each succeeding generation robots will become more a more acceptable.

I am in Italy quite often. They have a birthrate of 1.22. It is amazing to me that you rarely see a pregnant woman in Italy and you rarely see a mother with more than one child.

Phil:

I'm less optimistic that Europe's birthrate can recover. The problem is self-reinforcing. As Jake pointed out, it's rare to see families with more than one child in Italy.

It's because the welfare state costs so much in taxes that normal people can't afford to move away from their parents. No independent home means fewer kids. Fewer kids means that each generation has fewer young workers to share the burden of the older pensioners.

So taxes either go up or pensions come down. Up till now, its been political suicide for any leader in Europe to suggest that pensions come down.

So... the population falls.

Yeah, but eventually the population rate falls to zero and taxation approaches infinity. Somewhere along the way before that happens (pretty soon, I'm thinking), the whole system collapses and the economics and dynamics of family life change.

I'd have to disagree with Stephen about the tax-issue. I live in Finland, one of the most heavily-taxed countries in the world. Yet I moved out at the age of sixteen, some of my friends at seventeen and most of them by the age of twenty.

The deciding factor for most young people to move out is the distance to work, school or university. The people in my circle of friends who moved out the last were the ones who had the chance to study in the same town as their parents lived. But even then they moved out almost as soon as possible in search for independence. It's more about culture and less about economics.

See, the flipside of having high taxes is that we also have different subsidies for students or poor or young people that encourage people to move out. My experience about other countries is limited, but for the most part the Northern Europe operates as written above.

There are also incentives for having children in a form of monthly support (that actually increases the more you have children). These have not caused a baby boom. (They have been around for decades, though.)

I can see two major reasons for lower birthrate. One is the standard of living. Several studies have showed that increases in welfare level have lowered the birth rate. More children surviving childhood means less pressure to have hundreds of babies. Of course there are exceptions to this such as religious views.

The second reason is the time it takes to "grow up". In the current world climate, Finland is investing in education. This means that more people go to universities and such, spend time studying, and join the workforce at a later age. Add relatively high levels of man-woman equality in to the mix and you can see how the child-bearing age gets raised. This in turn lowers the birthrate.

The topic of the pension bomb has been around for a decade at least, but no really good solutions have come up. A well-known competition for new enterprises has special awards for solutions in healthcare and care for the elderly, so we are at least nibbling at the fringes of the problem.

Up here in the North, we don't get that many immigrants, for the reasons of policy, (in Finland's case) language and the winter. My hope lies with the robots.

I'd love to see some US immigrants here, though :-) Unfortunately immigrants tend to be in search for a better life, and there's no guarantee that people who are not well off in the US would do better. Perhaps my only hope is a non-science friendly administration that would drive the high-level scientists to Europe... (no, not really. The global costs associated with that would be higher than the gain for Europe.)

I for one welcome our new robot caretakers.

i can not see what the riots in france have to do with immigrants' understanding of democracy. neither can anyone who is inclined to read newspapers, at least here in europe. most experts agree that the causes were economical and social much rather than political or even religious. it's still a problem, no question about that, but it hardly has anything to do with political views.
but none of this will matter once the robotic overlords are in control. it'll be all hive mind then, you know. ;)

Antii:

Thoughtful comment...thank you. I made some broad generalizations. None of what I said is going to apply to every European (like you and your friends) or even every European country.

You are certainly correct that part of the developed world's problem with birth rate is lengthy education. It's hard for a woman who just got out of school at 30 to find the necessary time to have 2.1 kids before 40.

It's also true that anything the government subsidizes it will get more of - including kids. Of course raising children in a developed country is a very expensive proposition. If childlessness is already part of the culture, it might take quite a subsidy to positively affect birthrates.

If a welfare system is already stretched to the limit, subsidizing children would probably not be a workable solution. It would benefit the long term, but the price would be a worsening of the problem in the short term.

You also hit on another subject that I thought to mention in my post but didn't - the fact that the replacement value will differ from society to society. If you live in a country that has a high infant mortality, is prone to civil war, famine, or disease, then the replacement value has to be higher.

Since it takes two to tango, I suspect that 2.1 is the replacement value necessary for the developed world. That ".1" spare wouldn't be sufficient in a dangerous country.

But, as you said, the developed world is relatively safe, so there isn't the same pressure to have many children. This may have contributed to the "1 baby is enough" mindset. But no matter how safe your country is, anything less than an average of 2 babies per woman is insufficient to maintain population without immigration.

Eisendorn:

Economic and social differences have nothing to do with politics?

And religion - particularly where the religion has it's own body of Sharia law - has nothing to do with social differences?

I disagree, but I have to ask, would it make my post substantively wrong if you were right? Regardless of what motivates these immigrants - economic and social differences or politics and religion - 200 burning cars is a good night in Paris.

France has got a big problem with its immigrants, but it has to have immigrants to keep from depopulating. The robots aren't ready for "prime time" yet.

Phil:

Of course you are correct that there has to come a breaking point. But will that breaking point come after pluralistic democracy is lost in Europe?

I'm not suggesting that Islam is incompatible with pluralistic democracy. But it seems that many of these immigrants are particularly hostile to the present governments in the West.

stephen:

if you put a few thousand americans under the same conditions immigrants are living in the banlieus of france, you would most likely get the same kind of riots, regardless of the fact that on the average, those people will have a firm believe in democracy.
the muslims there did not ignite the cars to make a statement for sharia or totalitarism; they are just filled up with being socially neglected by a reputedly chauvinist french upper class. or at least that's the impression i got from hearing "experts" elaborate on the topic.
this difference may be subtle in the context of your posting, but it makes a huge difference in fighting for the multicultural society. it is my personal opinion that we should _not_ keep for ourselves. history shows that important scientific and cultural breakthroughs almost always occured in those so-called melting pots, or along the intersection lines of major civilizations. as a particular example, i name milet - a bustling harbor city - as the reputed birthplace of philosophy.
i agree with phil that americans have adopted the melting pot mentality to a much greater degree than europeans, who traditionally seem to suffer from xenophobia. point for your side. ;)

eisendorn:

I didn't mean to suggest that the France is blameless. I'm sure they could have done more to help the melting pot effect along.

This melting pot is crucial. France needs the immigrants (those robots aren't coming for a few years) but the immigrants aren't assimilating.

You are right to point out that "why not?" is a key question for the French to ask.

eisendorn --

Of course, Stephen isn't arguing against immigration or the value of cultures coming together. I think the riots in France are less than the best possible example of what he's getting at precisely because of what you pointed out -- these people live in nasty conditions and have been marginalized by the society in which they were to be incorporated. We could spend a lot of time discussing how much of that problem is the French and how much of it is the immigrants themselves wanting nothing to do with the majority culture, but never mind.

Let's look at some other examples. What do you make of the London Underground bomber whose father ran a chip shop and who was himself a school teacher? I don't see the economic motivations being a big factor, there. What I do see is a second-generation immigrant who somehow managed not to "melt" very well in the old melting pot.

It seems that there are now two systems in place for the women in Europe. On for the European women who enjoy equality of rights and the protection of laws, and another for Muslim women who live or die at the pleasure of their men. Do you think that "live or die" is hyperbole? It isn't.

If the problem in Europe is that Europeans are bigots who don't want to take in "the other," then that's bad. But it's an easier problem to solve than if the immigrants themselves are heavily resistant to the notion of assimilation and prepared to take violent action to keep their own separate -- especially if European countries don't have the courage of their convictions where things like women's rights are concerned. In the US, if society has to choose between allowing a group to continue in its traditional lifestyle and allowing individuals the rights they are guaranteed under the constitution, we go with the second option. Apparently Europeans actually believe the first option to be correct, or they are afraid to appear otherwise. But once a society puts its values on the bargaining table like that, and then continues to increase the number among their ranks to whom they do not feel their values can be applied...that society is in a lot of trouble.

phil,

i can not envision why on the one side, you wish to keep political debate mostly out of this blog (which i fully agree to) and on the other hand recommend an article written by a, uhm, hardcore-hardliner (hanson). this letter just summarizes, in a very elegant and poetic fashion, what we europeans think that you think. sorry, but it does nothing but emphasize all my assumed prejudice.
there's one point he's right about: a strong europe would definitely be a plus for the us, too. but: i do not believe that we can attain this goal by remaining the appendix of you guys, shutting up in face of some hard-to-understand decisions (i.e. going to war in iraq - nay, i didn't write this!), and in turn accepting your help when we are overrun by "islamo-fascists".
fortunately, you made it clear to me that i should not view the us as a monolithic entity in an earlier debate. indeed you are not victor hanson, so my reply stops here. i only wish i had the chance to talk to _that_ guy once.

eisendorn --

Cheerfully ammended. I've removed the VDH link from my previous comment. It wasn't important to my argument; I just thought the middle three paragraphs ending with "cry the beloved continent" raise some interesting points. But, hey, we're about the future here, not politics.

So just proceeding from what I myself wrote: what is the future of a Europe that significantly depopulates itself of Europeans while at the same time retreating on some of its core values -- e.g., the universal applicability of things like women's rights -- even as we witness rapid growth of the number of people living in Europe not terribly interested in adopting European values and who Europe has decided must be allowed to stand outside those norms in order to preserve their traditional culture?

You tell me.

phil,

i do not doubt that there is a problem with integrating immigrants into the european community. i am not a big fan of rapid eastwards expansion, when "back home", the european constitution is buried by the french. but where is the alternitive? sheltering ourselves, e.g. by dissalowing turkey to join the union? in my view, this would only lead to the kind of seperation between the two worlds we, the europeans, do not want (sorry: we, the post-intellectual or left-wing liberalist europeans). i think that integration with the muslim world is just about our only chance to resolve this conflict. sure, there has to be reglementation, legislation, general socio-economic measures to cope with that, and i freely admit that not all conditions for a smooth processing are given. but this is the challenge our generation has to work on. i simply do not believe that an endless series of preventive strikes will do anything good for that matter.
furthermore, we are _not_ retreating on our core values. i do not think i would get a significant deviation if i'd do a headcount of muslim men raping or killing women over matters of honor and white supremacists in the us. still i do not claim that you are retreating on equality of race. people projecting an inflationary rise in such incidents are, in the wake of 9/11, called experts in the news. but on what data do they act? we should not sit back and wait; we should proactively work towards the higher goal of a multicultural, integrated europe, without trying to eradicate cultural pecularities, as long as they conform with existing principle values, human rights, and the law.
i do not think that this should give you reason to look upon us with contempt.

Okay, eisendorn, I'm writing this and then I'll let you have the last word, but that's it. I fear we may be verging on a political discussion here. ;-)

Just three quick clarifications.

1. I still think you have an unrealistically high estimate of how many white supremacists we have here, but let's say you're right. In fact, let's say you're on the low end and (per capita) there are 5 klansmen/neo-nazis in the US for every one potential honor-killer in Europe. Or even for every guy who lords absolute power over his wife and daughters: beating them, putting them into arranged marriages against their will, etc.

Here's the difference. No one in the US in a position of public trust would dare to suggest that a hate crime committed by a white supremacist has to somehow be placed in context by that individual's culture.

2. I think bringing Turkey into the EU is a great idea.

3. I don't hold Europe in contempt. I love Europe. My wife and I plan to live there when we retire. But we are keeping a careful eye on what happens there in the mean time.

Several thoughts:

First, I've been advised I should thank Stephen for commenting on my blog, so I will do just that: thank you! I'll do my best to return the favor.

Secondly, I think the above discussion lapsed into the political rapidly, a result nearly impossible to avoid given the Steyn article itself. Demography may be science, but solutions, in the form of tax incentives for marriage, pension reform or immigration policy in Europe can't help but be political. That said, it's not a bad thing: great discussion.

Thirdly, one of my favorite reads of late is the terrific novel, Kiln People, by David Brin, which suggests quite a different solution to the demographic challenge. Great stuff, though perhaps more than a few years out as a reality. There's a reason the genre is called science fiction, after all.

Lastly, and perhaps most important, unless Europeans and Japanese shed very closely held and prized nationalistic beliefs, revering ancient cultural and, dare I say, cultural custom, immigration will continue to result in marginalization of those immigrating. The American experiment has been successful, despite initial cultural chauvinism towards the current immigrant wave (Irish, German, Latino or Somali, depending on the era) because of the lack of such strong attachments, beyond that of the Protestant ethic or market capitalism, of course.