I'm beginning to believe those prognosticators who say that Europe is already lost. I hope we can hold the line here in the U.S.A.

I suspect things will change. . . the day after we lose a city or three to a "terrorist" nuclear weapon. . .

Then, suddenly, we will start playing "Cowboys and Muslims". . .

I suspect things will change. . . the day after we lose a city or three to a "terrorist" nuclear weapon. . .

That should be the day we level Mecca and turn it into a crater of glass. They claim that Allah will not permit such destruction of a holy place. I say we put their faith to the test.

And yes, Europe is lost. Go visit the places you would like to see, before they're destroyed and it becomes too dangerous for an infidel.

I'm sure they do the same thing when the Southern Baptist Convention visits.

Italy, along with several other Western European countries, is, according to demographers, in a population death-spiral from which it is most unlikely to recover. The fertility rate has been below 1.5 for decades, and once was below 1.2! But at least Italian (and other Western) women are empowered, educated and have careers on the way out, amirite?

The vanishing of "Italians" is creating an ever more powerful vacuum pulling in ... well, now we know, don't we? In as little as a couple of hundred years, the majority of "Italians" may be calling for the destruction of all of that deviant Western art and architecture, and Saint Peters might be a nice, big mosque.

Italian is on its way to becoming another Latin, it appears. Probably not so with Spanish, but Spaniards themselves are also rapidly disappearing.

Sad? Yes, I think so.

According to one source, having more children in Italy is just too expensive, because EVERTHING's expensive there. I can believe it, having visited.

Cowboys and Muslims reminds me of several memes I've seen bouncing around. Pro-immigration memes with native Americans saying whites shouldn't be afraid of immigrants. Which to me implys many Libs so hate whiteness and western culture that us being in reservations would be seen as justice.

OK, not serving alcohol or any other food preferences I would do myself, and consider it a common courtesy.

For example, I certainly wouldn't expect the white house to host a beef barbeque if the visiting PM of India was a known practicing Hindu who didn't eat meat. That would be just rude.

But, the covering up of art work because the visiting Iranian President is a fucking prude?

Nope, that disrespectful to the native Italian heritage and culture. Fuck 'em if they get all upset at seeing naked marble titties!

Fuck 'em if they get all upset at seeing naked marble titties!

It isn't that.

It's the fact that he'll become this drooling, ravening rape machine because of those nekkid marble titties. Worse, he'll try to rape the marble statue.

Have you ever tried getting marble shards out of your schlong?

According to one source, having more children in Italy is just too expensive, because EVERTHING's expensive there. I can believe it, having visited.

Posted by: lenona at January 26, 2016 12:31 PM

Visitors only see the quaint architecture. You never experience the property taxes, the gas taxes, the income taxes, the graft, the bribes, or the crime in those areas where most tourists don't go.

This is what I love about you Lenona, you just *assume* that Italy has to be affordable because you can go there.

Try talking to the Eastern European woman cleaning your hotel room, who lives in a studio flat and cooks on a hot plate, Her husband, a former member of the Russian Army, works construction, and their two kids are living with her parents back in their poverty stricken village because they can't afford to support them in Rome. She last saw her own kids three years ago.

You might learn something about how good we have it in the US.

@Lenona. I apologize. I misread your,post.

And by the way, Italy was affordable before they joined the European Union. All the business owners I talked to,hated being in the Euro.

The population decline started long before that.

And the European Union may be gone soon. Italy needs to return to the Lire.

Population decline is not a bad thing when there are not enough jobs to go around as it is. I mean it's available workers divided by the number of available jobs, right? Population decline can even be a GOOD thing, as long as you don't start flooding your country with immigrants at the same time. (Oh, and giving them free shit.)

The medieval practices of Islam and the visit of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani to Italy have coincided in the Italians covering up nude statues and (reportedly) not serving wine with dinner.

Also, Rouhani demanded, "no Adele!"

Population decline isnt a bad thing when the world wide population is increasing by about a billion people per decade

We need to stop giving food and technology to the third world, or start lacing it with contrceptives

The problem is retirement in Europe is currently dependent on their being a certain amount of young people to pay for the older ones. So a lot of people feel they need to import young workers. The problem is, you can't keep doing that forever, as those young workers will get old... the population can't grow indefinitely.

Europe is pretty crowded, there's not a lot of unused land. A population decline might not be such a bad thing. I think the retirement problem might as well be fixed now rather than kicking the can further down the road, it's going to have to be dealt with eventually anyhow.

I say let birthrates fall, they'll go back up again when it make sense for them to.

EXACTLY, lujlp!

I've often thought, on occasion when watching the horrors of famine in some farflung place, that engineering a virus that causes sterility and releasing it in places south of the equator would be a kindness.

What's that quote, one death is a tragedy but 20 million is a statistic? Something is going to have to give. Not conceiving the people who can't care for themselves is probably a better solution than most.

Was it on here, a few years ago, I read about a Dr getting in trouble for sterilizing drug addicts without their knowledge? I just couldn't get worked up about that-it needed doing and drug addicts aren't exactly rational and capable of making good choices.

As NicoleK said, if you are dependent on inter-generational transfer payments (like SS) then a population decline is a killer. But importing a bunch of people who don't share your values just makes things worse.

Momof4, those deaths due to famine are not due to an inability to produce food. They are due to corruption. Zimbabwe was once a breadbasket of Africa. After Mugabe the currency is worthless and starvation common.

"Momof4, those deaths due to famine are not due to an inability to produce food. "

This. 21st-century Earth, with our 21st-century technology, is capable of producing more than enough food to go around. When famine is happening, it's because someone in authority wants it to happen.

Well said, Pirate Jo and NicoleK.

Here's more (by Frank Bruni, from 2002):

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/world/persistent-drop-in-fertility-reshapes-europe-s-future.html?pagewanted=all

Excerpts:

...It was Italy as outsiders still imagine it: child-worshiping and family-loving.

But there was something wrong with the picture. Most of the parents were gazing at one, and only one, child.

That was true of Gianluca Valenti, who said that giving his son any siblings would be too exhausting and expensive, and of Barbara Lenzi, who said that more than one child ''doesn't seem to make sense.''

It was also true of Rosa Andolfi, who responded to a question about having an additional child as if a vampire were near.

''Basta!'' Ms. Andolfi more or less yelped, then made a cross with her index fingers and thrust it forward.

That gesture was not just funny but telling; it touched on an increasingly worrisome reality for Italy and other European countries whose fertility rates have plummeted over the last decades, shifting one-child families close to the statistical norm...

(snip)

Interesting information from Teresa Ginori, near the end, too.

A very telling story Lenona. You seem to have two things going on.
1. Life is expensive
So people have little hope for the future. They don't want to bring more than one life into a world they know will be worse that what they had. (and not even one some times.)
2. Secular greed
Italians see no reason to sacrifice for anyone else. Not a spouse. And certainly not a child. So people don't have children because the long term costs aren't worth it.

Either way (or yet a third) you have nations that are dying. They see no reason to continue themselves.

Even Conservation Magazine admitted, a couple of years ago, that the falling global birth rates are no match for increased longevity everywhere. So, even if every couple stayed married and had just one child, it might take a while before population growth went into reverse. But that hardly means that in a world of finite resources, the solution to the needs of an increasing elderly population is for younger couples to have babies that they just don't want. (Does anyone REALLY think we'll be doing OK in a world of 20 billion - or even ten billion?)

Sorry to disappoint you Lenona.

"Does anyone REALLY think we'll be doing OK in a world of 20 billion - or even ten billion?"

Yes.

Sorry to disappoint YOU; while First World people might still occasionally have children for cold, practical reasons (such as having someone who will, in theory, be able and willing to care for the parents when they're old), that does not mean that anyone deliberately makes unwanted children for the sake of future strangers' welfare. Or for the economy. In the meantime, I see nothing wrong with the saying "every child should be a wanted (loved) child" when so many unwanted children are still being born and raised by terrible people who simply won't give them up until the government takes them away.

That doesn't disappoint me at all. . . . Now I'm disappointed in my lack of disappointment. Does that count as success?