patrick.net

Ten years ago this month - January 2006 - The Wall Street Journal and The New Criterion published my first draft of what would become the thesis of my bestselling book, America Alone. The Journal headline sums it up: "It's the Demography, Stupid." Opening paragraph:

Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.

The argument was straightforward. The western world is going out of business because it's given up having babies. The 20th century welfare state, with its hitherto unknown concepts such as spending a third of your adult lifetime in "retirement", is premised on the basis that there will be enough new citizens to support the old. But there won't be. Lazy critics of my thesis thought that I was making a "prediction", and that my predictions were no more reliable than Al Gore's or Michael Mann's on the looming eco-apocalypse. I tried to explain that it's not really a prediction at all:

When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%.

Enter Islam, which sportingly volunteered to be the children we couldn't be bothered having ourselves, and which kind offer was somewhat carelessly taken up by the post-Christian west. As I wrote a decade ago:

The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion.

That didn't work out too great for the Shakers, but the Europeans figured it would be a piece of cake for them: "westernization" is so seductive, so appealing that, notwithstanding the occasional frothing imam and burka-bagged crone, their young Muslims would fall for the siren song of secular progressivism just like they themselves had. So, as long as you kept the immigrants coming, there would be no problem - as long as you oomphed up the scale of the solution. As I put it:

To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants at a rate no stable society has ever attempted.

Last year, Angela Merkel decided to attempt it. The German Chancellor cut to the chase and imported in twelve months 1.1 million Muslim "refugees". That doesn't sound an awful lot out of 80 million Germans, but, in fact, the 1.1 million Muslim are overwhelmingly (80 per cent plus) fit, virile, young men. Germany has fewer than ten million people in the same population cohort, among whom Muslims are already over-represented: the median age of Germans as a whole is 46, the median age of German Muslims is 34. But let's keep the numbers simple, and assume that of those ten million young Germans half of them are ethnic German males. Frau Merkel is still planning to bring in another million "refugees" this year. So by the end of 2016 she will have imported a population equivalent to 40 per cent of Germany's existing young male cohort. The future is here now: It's not about "predictions".

On standard patterns of "family reunification", these two million "refugees" will eventually bring another four or five persons each from their native lands - or another eight-to-ten million. In the meantime, they have the needs of all young lads, and no one around to gratify them except the local womenfolk. Hence, New Year's Eve in Cologne, and across the southern border the Vienna police chief warning women not to go out unaccompanied, and across the northern border:

Danish nightclubs demand guests have to speak Danish, English or German to be allowed in after 'foreign men in groups' attack female revellers

But don't worry, it won't be a problem for long: On the German and Swedish "migrant" numbers, there won't be a lot of "female revelry" in Europe's future. The formerly firebreathing feminists at The Guardian and the BBC are already falling as mute as battered wives - saying nothing, looking away, making excuses, clutching at rationalizations... Ten years ago, I wrote:

The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.

"Multiculturalism" was less an immigration policy than an advertisement of our moral virtue. So the really bad thing about New Year's Eve is not that Continental women got groped and raped by coarse backward "migrants", but that all these gropes and rapes might provoke the even more coarse and backward natives. I did all the gags a decade ago:

The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims.

And so it goes ten years on. We're beyond parody now. A decade back, I noted:

Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque... But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games.

Nobody makes that mistake these days. Six Canadians working for a Quebec Catholic humanitarian organization repairing schoolrooms in Burkina Faso get slaughtered by Muslim terrorists, and the Prince Minister skedaddles to a mosque run by a woman-hating loon to hold the moment of silence.

Like I said, I did all the jokes way back when, and it's not so funny after ten years. My thesis was straightforward: a semi-Muslim France will not be France; it will be something other, and - if you happen to value things like freedom of speech and women's rights - it will be something worse:

Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?

This ought to be the left's issue. I'm a conservative--I'm not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic in your society is cheerfully intolerant? Who, after all, are going to be the first victims of the West's collapsed birthrates?

And so it goes, on the streets of the most "liberal" "progressive" cities on the planet.

A few weeks before The Wall Street Journal published my piece, I discussed its themes at an event in New York whose speakers included Douglas Murray. Douglas was more optimistic: He suggested that Muslim populations in Europe were still small, and immigration policy could be changed: Easier said than done. My essay and book were so influential that in the decade since, the rate of Islamization in the west has increased - via all three principal methods: Muslim immigration, Muslim birthrates of those already here, Muslim conversion of the infidels. David Goldman thinks aging, childless Germany has embraced civilizational suicide as redemption for their blood-soaked sins. Maybe. But it is less clear why the Continent's less tainted polities - impeccably "neutral" Sweden, for example - are so eager to join them. As I wrote:

Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an "amiable dunce" (in Clark Clifford's phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. The CIA analysts' position was that East Germany was the ninth biggest economic power in the world. In 1987 there was no rash of experts predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself.

Somewhere, deep down, the European political class understands that the Great Migrations have accelerated the future I outlined way back when:

Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.

It's the biggest story of our time, and, ten years on, Europe's leaders still can't talk about it, not to their own peoples, not honestly. For all the "human rights" complaints, and death threats from halfwits, and subtler rejections from old friends who feel I'm no longer quite respectable, I'm glad I brought it up. And it's well past time for others to speak out.

http://www.steynonline.com/7428/it-still-the-demography-stupid

#nobabiesinasia Baby Onboarding
Asia
In Japan, a diapers company recently announced that it would be switching its focus from babies to adults – it’s been years since the sales of its products for seniors vastly outpaced those for infants.

Across East Asia and elsewhere on the continent, governments, businesses and analysts are reacting – and sometimes panicking – in relation to a steep population decline and an aging population that mean slower economic growth, a strain on services and benefits, and a shrinking labor force to pay for them in the future.

And almost everyone is trying to find a way to solve the dilemma of the missing babies.

This demographic cliff has mainly arisen because of brutal job markets, skyrocketing living and education costs, slow wage growth, employment insecurity, and tough corporate cultures. But many also attribute the decline to, ironically, traditional family values that have kept many Japanese and Korean women from wanting to bear children.

Last year, the birth rate in Japan decreased to a record low after falling more than 5 percent compared with 2022. The approximately 760,000 babies born in 2023 were among the smallest generation born since the country began tallying the birth rate in 1899. The number of live births, meanwhile, has dropped more than 50 percent in five decades, the BBC reported.

At the same time, marriages in Japan decreased by almost 6 percent. Fewer than half a million Japanese couples took vows of matrimony, the lowest rate in 90 years. Out-of-wedlock births and single parenthood, furthermore, are rare in Japan due to “family values based on a paternalistic tradition,” reported the Guardian.

It’s become such a concern that recently, Tokyo officials began developing a dating app to encourage love and, hopefully, marriage and children. That’s in addition to its singles events, counseling sessions on marriage and a campaign where “lovers can have their stories of how they first met turned into comics or songs.”

“Japan is standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society,” said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Similar sentiments are expressed in the back halls of the National Assembly in Seoul. Even so, women in South Korea, which has the lowest fertility rate in the world, cite cultural hurdles, particularly for women balancing career and work demands with caring for a family, in opting out of motherhood. In the South Korean language, the term for wife is “home person.”

Accordingly, South Korean wives who work grueling day jobs are also expected to cook, clean, and care for the kids, even at an advanced age, wrote the Washington Post. The gender pay gap in the country is also the highest among industrialized countries: Females earn 69 cents on the dollar compared with males.

As a result, many women are opting out, noted World Politics Review. For example, the number of marriages dropped by half between 1996 and 2021.

A movement, 4B, encapsulates this situation: It’s one in which its exclusively female members eschew marriage, childbirth and even dating, saying a life without a man is a life with freedom. “I’m not even fighting the patriarchy – I’ve decided to walk out of it,” said one member, Kim Jina.

Some companies, however, are now jumping in to address these issues, after government initiatives such as subsidized housing for newlyweds and payments for babies failed to reverse the trends. That’s no surprise: Businesses worry over the numbers that show the workforce will halve within 50 years. Now, many are offering bonuses for babies: Booyoung Group, a Seoul-based construction company, for example, is paying new mothers and fathers $75,000 per child.

Japan and South Korea, however, aren’t alone in their population woes: Throughout Asia, countries including China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and parts of India are experiencing demographic crises. Work demands and traditions are often to blame there, too.

A big challenge in this shift is how governments will pay for the services associated with growing elderly populations – pensions, healthcare, home health aides, etc. – when the pool of younger taxpayers who are working to foot the bill is shrinking. That’s especially a concern in countries like Japan which have long resisted immigration but is now rethinking its policies and rolling out its “tatami welcome mat,” as the Spectator put it.

It’s an even bigger issue for those countries who are aging without having become wealthy such as Thailand and Vietnam, which face an aging population that is getting old in poverty, putting a burden on the already patchy provision of pensions, healthcare and other key systems. Meanwhile, these countries’ economies often depend on sectors such as agriculture that aren’t easy for the elderly to participate in.

Meanwhile, China’s birth rate is especially concerning. With 1.4 billion people, the country is now the second-most populous after India, losing its top spot last year. But its population could decrease by half to 770 million by 2100 if current trends continue, argued Scientific American. That threatens its prosperity.

Still, Chinese couples eschew children for the same reasons as others in Asia. Their country’s one-child policy, which sought to restrict out-of-control population growth between 1980 and 2016, was rooted in these economic motivations. “The policy supercharged the country’s workforce: By caring for fewer children, young people could be more productive and put aside more money,” wrote the Wall Street Journal.

Still, the government is taking action, recently raising the retirement age to 65 and putting restrictions on abortions. And Chinese prosecutors, for example, recently exposed Chinese firms that were requiring job applicants to take pregnancy tests so they would not hire workers who would later require parental leave and other benefits, CNN reported.

It’s clear: Officials in Beijing want more kids. But as in South Korea, a preference for males through sex-selection family planning as well as natural trends now means men outnumber women and would-be grooms face bleak marriage prospects, the Conversation wrote. That’s in addition to a trend showing how almost double the number of men over women desire marriage.

Meanwhile, the efforts to change marriage and birth trends as well as initiatives to promote women’s rights and equality are inspiring a backlash from men, some of whom are forming groups similar to incels (shortened from “involuntary celibates”), the Economist wrote.

In South Korea, New Men on Solidarity, a men’s-rights group, calls feminism a mental illness, and is courted by the country’s president who said it is hurting “healthy relationships.” In Japan, “Twitter Feminists,” has become a derogatory term. And a group called “the Center for Weak Men” is attracting strong interest. Meanwhile, only 37 percent of South Korean women say they would date a “patriarchal” man, a recent survey found.

That, the news magazine added, means “the rise in anti-feminist sentiment bodes badly for the region’s birth rates.”

Well, it looks like we have to choose between demographic collapse or keeping women uneducated.

When gov collapse happens because of feminists it will return to normal.

Whites making a comeback?

The Bay Area is getting old — fast. It will change everything
The Bay Area is facing a doom loop. It’s just not the one we usually think about.
For years we’ve heard of the potential economic doom spiral circling San Francisco, where a massive city budget deficit fueled by remote work leads to poorer services and even more residents fleeing. But another threat has been building in relative silence.
The Bay Area is getting old fast, and it’s accelerating. Though aging is a global trend, the San Francisco metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin counties — is already the third-oldest among 20 of the largest regions in the U.S., trailing only two places in Florida. And no other region is growing older at a quicker pace.

EBGuy says

The Bay Area is getting old — fast. It will change everything
The Bay Area is facing a doom loop. It’s just not the one we usually think about.
For years we’ve heard of the potential economic doom spiral circling San Francisco, where a massive city budget deficit fueled by remote work leads to poorer services and even more residents fleeing. But another threat has been building in relative silence.
The Bay Area is getting old fast, and it’s accelerating. Though aging is a global trend, the San Francisco metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin counties — is already the third-oldest among 20 of the largest regions in the U.S., trailing only two places in Florida. And no other region is growing older at a quicker pace.

Old population, and also butt babies aren’t real babies, even if the recipient acts really really feminine.

Another factor is CA 1978 Prop 13 keeps the people from moving around!

When I was coming into adulthood in the late 90s / early 2000s, we used to joke that "30 is the new 20". By the time you go to college then start your career your already mid 20s. Find someone to settle down with and by the time your "ready" to have kids (and your NEVER really ready) your almost a decade older than the prior generation. I was in my early 30s when our first was born.

Now with housing bubble 2.0 and many white collar jobs needing a Masters degree (because most Bachelors ain't worth the paper they are printed on these days), it's only gotten worse. Plus kids are expensive.

As much as I wouldn't be opposed to one more, at my age that's probably not going to happen. So we're your typical 4 person family. Two cars in the garage, white picket fence, the whole nine.

Worse. It accelerates. 97% decline by 3 gen.

Ppl don't get demographics. Especially this little factoid:

"They just have to start having more babies before that collapse happens!"

No. When the TFR hits whatever number below replacement, it's corresponding effects IS ALREADY BAKED INTO THE FUCKING CAKE, period. Radically increasing birth rates won't change what's coming just what may happen after that.

So...if it worked for East Germany:

Currently, the Feds have a rural development program where poor people can buy rural housing on the cheap with a subsidized loan directly issued by the government even better than VA loans that vets get. This includes rehabbing the houses, if necessary. Its a pain in the ass to qualify for and often times one has to wait for Cingress to authorize the funding for it.

This is not to be confused with their other, more used program where they just back loans the bank issue for rural houses. Those have generous terms like very low down payments, etc. Similar to VA loans in that respect.

'Rural' in this context mostly just means 'not urban'. So exurbs are included.

Proposal, why not have a really generous loan program for young couples who have kids for these houses? Lots of them are going to need to be sold as their Boomer owners die off. Some towns that otherwise would die off like the ones in Japan, Italy, etc could be revitalized.

Couples would have to have popped out at least one kid by age 25 to qualify. Those thirty and above would need to have at at least two in order to apply.

https://rudy.substack.com/p/reverse-logans-run

This is sort of like a reverse Logan’s Run - you kill everyone under age 30.

I firmly believe the rising cost of living - which has been intentional Fed and governmental policy - is perhaps the leading cause of our demographic dystopia.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/burning-man-ethos-friday-august-29

You will be unsurprised to learn that plummeting birthrates have a political dimension. The Financial Times ran the story yesterday, headlined, “Why progressives should care about falling birth rates.” The reason they should care wasn’t because humanity itself is at risk, or from fears of catastrophic economic collapse. No. The subheadline drolly cautioned, “Falling fertility levels are making the world more conservative.”




... The trendline is stark. The more progressive, the worse the birthrate. It seems so clear, in fact, that births have nearly become a proxy for anti-human political ideology.

Patrick says

. The trendline is stark. The more progressive, the worse the birthrate. It seems so clear, in fact, that births have nearly become a proxy for anti-human political ideology.

This is why cities die unless they bring in more ppl from outside. Roman cities were like this, too. San Francisco has been famous for having more licensed pets than kids in school.

Another thing to consider:

Childless people are less involved with threats to children. They're fine with drag queen story time. They never learn that part of the soul in INNATE and really not learned.

EDIT: fixed "lean" to "learn"

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-simple-primer-on-replacement




Wow, you can see the change in the 1990s where Democrats decided to throw the working class overboard, and the working class moved over to the Republican Party, bringing their higher birth rate with them.

MolotovCocktail says

Patrick says

. The trendline is stark. The more progressive, the worse the birthrate. It seems so clear, in fact, that births have nearly become a proxy for anti-human political ideology.

This is why cities die unless they bring in more ppl from outside. Roman cities were like this, too. San Francisco has been famous for having more licensed pets than kids in school.

Christ, I felt an earthquake. So I have been right. I've been saying this for months. Glad you've finally admitted it.

WookieMan says

I've been saying this for months.

Sure pal, sure.

MolotovCocktail says

WookieMan says

I've been saying this for months.

Sure pal, sure.

What are you even talking about? Read my comments. Other users can corroborate that I've said cities are dying. Move out of them. I'm not wrong.

WookieMan says

What are you even talking about? Read my comments. Other users can corroborate that I've said cities are dying. Move out of them. I'm not wrong.

Again: "Sure pal, sure."

MolotovCocktail says

WookieMan says

What are you even talking about? Read my comments. Other users can corroborate that I've said cities are dying. Move out of them. I'm not wrong.

Again: "Sure pal, sure."

You sound like a 14 year old. I have one. Do you have a kid?

WookieMan says

MolotovCocktail says

WookieMan says

I've been saying this for months.

Sure pal, sure.

What are you even talking about? Read my comments. Other users can corroborate that I've said cities are dying. Move out of them. I'm not wrong.

Is Chicago dying? I visited last month - didn't look dead at all.

PS. Except for the ground floor of Trump tower - that was completely dead and vacant (at least on the river side).

WookieMan says

You sound like a 14 year old. I have one. Do you have a kid?

No. I sound like someone who calls out your bulkshit. If a 14 year old does it too, no big surprise there.

Patrick says

As Professor Larry Sabato says, "Demographics is destiny".

.

Good countries will raise strong armies and use them to keep out the riff-raff.

New book out on it. Good reading so far.

MolotovCocktail says

That means a lot of abandoned commercial and residential real estate as in South Korea is close to becoming a ghost town. And nearly zero housing starts for at least the next 50 years in South Korea.

What does that mean for geopolitics like its neighbor North Korea ?

.

AD says

What does that mean for geopolitics like its neighbor North Korea ?

You would need the same chart for them as well. It's not much different though.

zzyzzx says

AD says

What does that mean for geopolitics like its neighbor North Korea ?

You would need the same chart for them as well. It's not much different though.

Norks are pumping out ~1.8 kids* per woman. South Korea is currently around 0.72. North Korea's TFR is also higher than those of Russia (1.4), Japan (1.2), and China (1.0).

That's a big difference. If the Norks hold this for another 25 years while the Sorks lose a much larger huge chunk of their population, they'll be able to roll right into the South.

A TFR of 1.0 means that in two generations, 75% population reduction. And in three, 93%. It's not linear. A generation being defined as 25 years.

^^^ this is what peeps don't get about demographic collapse. It isn't demographic decline on steroids. It is its own animal and usually is terminal.

South Korea is fucked. Ukraine has a worse TFR and that is because of the war.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/prk/north-korea/fertility-rate

* if their stats can be believed.

Back to Boomers.

One thing that can't really be shorted is Sportsball.

GenX slightly less into sports than Boomers but once the Boomers go, Millies are far less and far smaller households, and Zoomies hardly at all, so Pro and College Sports will be nowhere near as profitable.

In 10-15 years, the great Sportsball decline will probably be the death knell of the Legacy Network Channels.

Cable TV Programming will have to become streaming, another thing that will die within 20 years. Talking to some seniors while exchanging a router: "What do you mean you don't have a Cable Box?"

Just like Newspapers were blithely confident in the mid-late 90s about their future, as were many Department Stores, so is Sportsball today.

(And no, I'm not happy about the end of Sportsball. While I think it once took up too much air in the room, It's now one LESS thing that culturally unites Americans)

DemoralizerOfPanicans says

Cable TV Programming will have to become streaming, another thing that will die within 20 years.

Interesting. Plain old over-the-air TV broadcasts will outlive cable. It may even be that ATSC-3 standard will give a new lease on life to OTA broadcasts, as ATSC-3 is interactive and can charge per view if wanted.