You might think the above is a pit of nitpicking, but as you 'always' accuse the left of FUD in their arguments I would expect a better argumentation from you.
Basically you say the birthrate in Europe is too low, and that must be because of its social welfare program. Oh yeah, and the only reason the birthrate is not down the plump in some of those countries is because they are being overrun by Islamitic fundamentalists.
First, yes, you are nitpicking and incidentally, you are wrong too in this case because we are using the statistics to project out.
There is a reason why 2.1 births per couple is considered "the replacement rate" rather than 2.0.
In a demographic where the average age is creeping up, then you can be certain that the birthrate needs to be higher than the death rate today in order for the population to remain stable or grow.
I also did not say "it must be because of its social welfare". I said:
My opinion is that it is entitlements. Consider this: Why have children? What is the incentive other than biological urge, to have children?
I gave my opinion. I didn't by any means make it sound like I was insisting on it being true. I am hazarding a guess.
But I see a wide variety and I would really be interested in a detailed analysis of their causes. Especially the low birth rates in the Eastern Europe countries, as their entitlement schemes are not that great at all.
...Hmmm. former communist countries...i.e. where everything is provided by the government...has lower birth rates.. Hmm. Yea, very hard to see any pattern there...
Then the terror factor, the Islam overrunning Europe, changing it beyond recognition. Well, I've always been told that immigrants are in fact good for a country. That countries which are open to them fare better. In fact, the number of immigrants in the capital of my country, Amsterdam, is now lower than it was a few centuries ago (and Amsterdam has a lot of immigrants, around 50% I believe, but don't quote me on it). I don't deny that there are challenges, there are. Islamitic intollerance and fundamentalism are certainly among them. And yes, Europe will change, which is a good thing, as you need change to survive. The current Europe is not the same as the Europe of fifty years ago, and in another fifty years you will have again a different Europe. Whether it will be a better one or not is for the Europeans to decide. But I don't think we're doomed (yet;-) ).
This really isn't a political issue as you seem to make it out to be. It's a math issue.
If 2 people only have 1 child then in the lifespan of a human being, the population of a country that averages that kind of behavior will be halved minus immigration.
And an awful lot of European countries are looking at those kinds of numbers (or close to them).
The current European culture of today is actually quite similar to 50 years ago and it's quite similar to what it was 200 years before that. I mean, could you be more disengenous in your argument? You really think that a spaniard from today going back 200 years would feel that alien (factoring technological changes)? I think not. But the "Spaniard" of 50 years from now, statistically, is going to have virtually no shared cultural heritage with that same spaniard from 200 years ago.
Unless Europeans start having babies, the Europeans of 50 years from now will be nothing recognizeable as the Europeans who have inhabited the continent for the past couple thousand years.
By your rationale, todays Americans are really no different from the Americans who were here 1000 years ago right? Surely, today's American is no different than the one that existed here before the mass migration of Europeans...
