The fifth horseman of the apocalypse

[MugenOne]

                                                                                                                                   Population decline is the elephant in the world's living room. As a matter of  																	arithmetic, we know that the social life of most developed countries will break  																	down within two generations. Two out of three Italians and three of four  																	Japanese will be elderly dependents by 2050. [1] If present fertility rates  																	hold, the number of Germans will fall by 98% over the next two centuries. No  																	pension and health care system can support such an inverted population pyramid.  																	Nor is the problem limited to the industrial nations. Fertility is falling at  																	even faster rates - indeed, at rates never before registered anywhere - in the  																	Muslim world.

The world’s population will fall by as much as a fifth between the middle and the end of the 21st century, by far the worst decline in human history.

The world faces a danger more terrible than the worst Green imaginings. The European environmentalist who wants to shrink the world’s population to reduce carbon emissions will spend her declining years in misery, for there will not be enough Europeans alive a generation from now to pay for her pension and medical care. [2] For the first time in world history, the birth rate of the whole developed world is well below replacement, and a significant part of it has passed the demographic point of no return.

But Islamic society is even more fragile. As Muslim fertility shrinks at a rate demographers have never seen before, it is converging on Europe’s catastrophically low fertility as if in time-lapse photography. The average 30-year-old Iranian woman comes from a family of six children, but she will bear only one or two children during her lifetime. Turkey and Algeria are just behind Iran on the way down, and most of the other Muslim countries are catching up quickly. By the middle of this century, the belt of Muslim countries from Morocco to Iran will become as gray as depopulating Europe. The Islamic world will have the same proportion of dependent elderly as the industrial countries - but one-tenth the productivity. A time bomb that cannot be defused is ticking in the Muslim world.

atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ML13Dj05.html http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE&n=a53e495a

 

[MugenOne]

… In the past, nations that foresaw their own demise fell to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Plague, Famine, and Death. Riding point for the old quartet in today’s more civilized world is a Fifth Horseman: loss of faith. Today’s cultures are dying of apathy, not by the swords of their enemies. …

I really enjoy reading Spengler’s essays and books. As a religious %between%Jew, Spengler says that he writes from a %between%Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses; the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie and unadaptable Islam.

Spengler is a founding member of George Soros’ Quantum Funds. Like Jim Roger, he’s no longer with the Funds.

 

[JDaniel]

… In the past, nations that foresaw their own demise fell to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Plague, Famine, and Death. Riding point for the old quartet in today’s more civilized world is a Fifth Horseman: loss of faith. Today’s cultures are dying of apathy, not by the swords of their enemies. …

I really enjoy reading Spengler’s essays and books. As a religious %between%Jew, Spengler says that he writes from a %between%Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses; the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie and unadaptable Islam.

Spengler is a founding member of George Soros’ Quantum Funds. Like Jim Roger, he’s no longer with the Funds.

Well. That puts a new slant on the over-population problem.

God bless,
jd

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Never trust extrapolation. The world is not linear and existing tendencies will not continue unchanged for all time.

 

[inocente]

Never trust extrapolation. The world is not linear and existing tendencies will not continue unchanged for all time.

I’m with you, I thought the prophets of doom said we’ll be done for by a giant asteroid or global warming long before demographics becomes a problem. There’s a cartoon somewhere with five horsemen carrying the banners War, Strife, Famine, Pestilence, and Information Technology.

 

[ivebeenshown]

Well with all the contraception and abortion abound, in combination with mothers pursuing educations and careers and both parents generally seeking their own entertainment rather than God, of course we are going to see a break in the population of industrialized societies…

 

[empther]

China also has an aging problem.
China has had a “one child” policy for years to keep its gigantic population from running out of the control. This means that in the near future there will be too many old people for the young to take care of.

It’s too late to do anything about it. The “one child” policy has been in place too long. A speical issue of The Economist magazine said China leaders are already worried about the imminent "middle age squeeze’ when there won’t be enough workers willing to do the menial jobs needed.

I’d hate to be a young person living in China.

As for the Moslems,
if they granted their people the same personal rights we enjoy in the U.S. and Europe, parents might have more kids. Meanwhile, their “free lunch” easy oil reserves will start running out soon…
Looks like they’re headed back to a camel economy.

 

[Spengler]

… In the past, nations that foresaw their own demise fell to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Plague, Famine, and Death. Riding point for the old quartet in today’s more civilized world is a Fifth Horseman: loss of faith. Today’s cultures are dying of apathy, not by the swords of their enemies. …

I really enjoy reading Spengler’s essays and books. As a religious %between%Jew, Spengler says that he writes from a %between%Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses; the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie and unadaptable Islam.

Spengler is a founding member of George Soros’ Quantum Funds. Like Jim Roger, he’s no longer with the Funds.

Thanks for the kind words about my writing. Permit me to correct a factual error: I was never employed by Quantum or any Soros venture. However, I was head of global fixed income research for Bank of America and head of credit strategy for Credit Suisse. Earlier I was a strategist at Bear Stearns. – Spengler