I find the subject of immigration interesting. Juxtapose this with the issue of the elderly increasingly being a burden on the young. The elderly are collecting pensions, using services, and the young have to pay. Though the elderly paid into those systems when they worked, lifespans have increased and they have more than use up their contributions. What to do? The birthrate in the UK and other developed countries is below replacement rate. The only answer is to bring in new workers, young workers, people who can support the system. Or, we can chuck the old out as some traditional cultures are said to have done. But then, we forget, the young will one day be old (if they are lucky) and maybe they don't want to end up like that.
New blood--immigration--is the answer. Maybe we can use intelligent policy to police immigration. Your wife, for example, is educated. She is highly employable. She has resources. She would be a plus. Controlling immigration--not limiting it--is the answer. Unless xenophobia is the true motivation behind resistance to immigration. The UK, the US, Japan, etc. can choose to remain insular, close the world out. Or these countries can employ intelligent immigration policies that are a benefit to the economy.
This is the magic trick that nobody seems to know how to accomplish. I've been watching the whole anti-immigration debates over the election period for a while and I haven't heard any xenophobia relating to it to be honest, other than the media's dishonest spin.
In the case of Nigel Farage, for example, the most anti-immigrant party leader, he repeatedly says that we should judge people on the content of their character, that we should treat people equally, that we should be blind to skin colour. If that's as xenophobic as we get then... I don't think we have much of a problem there!
But yes right now, the immigration is completely uncontrolled chaos. 1 million per year is just unfathomable I could talk about for hours, but I also just don't think we should be sniping all the much needed talent from other countries to keep for ourselves just to prop up our population numbers. Brain drain is a devastating illness in a country and we're contributing to that problem.
The bigger solution, to me, is to make living in the country more conducive to rearing children. This is the same problem everywhere. South Korea being the worst. Why? Because it's too expensive to raise kids. They've poured billions of dollars into desperately convincing people to have more kids but until it's affordable, it ain't gonna happen.
I think we're all learning to become corporate vassal states where everyone is raised to believe that acquiring wealth is everything, at the expense or normal human behaviour like raising a family.
Now, a successfully managed decline of a population is actually a valid outcome. If our population falls at a much slower rate so there's no shock to the economic system, it could actually be the best outcome (since we can't just grow infinitely, either). Just... easier said than done
I'm not accusing anyone of xenophobia--don't know enough about internal British politics to do that. In the U.S. it is a factor (which is odd, considering we are a country made up of immigrants--except for Native Americans). And I'm not an economist, nor am I a demographer. I just know that a declining birth rate, below the replacement rate, is generally not considered a good outcome--without immigration. Besides less workers to do work in an increasingly grey population, there are less people paying taxes to support the services the government provides across the board. More cynically, there are less people to fight in armies (terrible thought). I just looked up the statistics on Ancient Rome. It seems before its decline, the empire suffered a decline in birth rate to the extent that the emperor tried to offer rewards to women to have children.
As for persuading people to have children: It's more than making child-rearing affordable. In a culture where people are confident their children will survive childhood, there is little incentive to have more than one or two children. Children aren't merely expensive--they're inconvenient. The replacement birth rate in the U. S. is 2.1. Most people I know don't want to have more than two children. I certainly didn't. I would say it is not unusual to have one child households. Having children is especially inconvenient to the woman. What if her relationship fails? Inevitably, the woman suffers a decline in economic security...this insecurity lasts into old age.
Maybe a decline in population (native population) is good, as you say. I don't see it, but then, as I said, I'm not an economist or a demographer.
All of that aside--it seems you are happy, @mobbs, happily married. I'm very happy for you :)
Well, not native or otherwise, just an overall decline is good, if slow and steady enough. The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries on the planet. The entire landscape got ravaged for wood to the point that forests are practically extinct, and wildlife is on apocalyptic decline due to agriculture and real estate. Growing the human population indefinitely at a rate of a million/year (a new city per year requires being built, then) can't possibly be a good thing... It must be appreciated that for countries like ours and say the Netherlands, there is almost no land whatsoever that isn't either farmland or housing.
The USA, with almost infinite land and resources, is a very different animal than Europe (and really, the rest of the world), and generally I can see how immigration to the USA can, uniquely, be a net benefit. You guys can literally double your population and the landscape will hardly flinch.
For the UK, we've seen an unprecedented decline in quality of life in every single aspect while immigration has skyrocketed. It may not be the entire cause, but it's certainly not the solution, and we're only adding problems to a country that is 15x as densely populated as the US, and 50% more than Japan.
For comparison, it would be like getting the population density of New Jersey, and applying that across the whole of the USA. Picture that!
Of course! We make our own happiness =D But I do have a love for my homeland despite the mess it's in, and I'm concerned for it...
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