Demography is not destiny according to this author

By Aussiegirl

Taking a contrarian view to the current consensus that Europe is demographically doomed to be overwhelmed by Muslim populations, the author posits that simply extrapolating current birth trends leads to erroneous assumptions. He makes the case that that is where the population explosion Malthusian doomsayers like Paul Ehrlich made their errors when they predicted global doom, overpopulation, food shortages and famine. Well worth the read and good to keep in mind.

One thing that societies are going to have to do is to give heavy tax subsidies and exemptions to families who want to have more children if they want to counter this trend. It makes no sense to force working families who are trying to raise children have to pay a heavy burden in Social Security to keep garishly clad seniors in free Viagra while they patronize the early-bird special. Let's face it -- Social Security was intended to keep widows from starving to death. It makes no sense to sacrifice the younger generation in order to support the older generation in a style of comfortable leisure.

The American Thinker

“Europe will be Islamic by the end of this century at the very latest.”

The floodgates opened with that comment from Bernard Lewis. Since its publication in Die Welt in July 2004, countless responses have appeared from writers as varied as George Weigel and Patrick Buchanan. The latest is Mark Steyn, in a New Criterion essay (reprinted in the Wall Street Journal) titled, in his customary understated style, “It’s the Demography, Stupid.”

An unusual unanimity has prevailed – almost every writer concurs with Lewis that Europe is a lost cause, a casualty in the war against Islamofascism.

The argument is straightforward: the native European population is dropping, with birthrates in all countries below replacement level. The Muslim populace, for the most part unassimilated, is still expanding. One curve is going up, the other down. When they cross, Europe will have effectively come under Muslim control.

But is it truly that simple? After all, there’s a reason why you’re not reading this in a U.S. with a population of 500 million+, which is what demography foresaw in 1950. Or in the 2006 world of 8 billion souls, as predicted ten years later. And certainly not in the 21st century universally forecast in the 70s, in which a few survivors grub about in the ruins left by the Great Crash following a runaway population explosion.

The reason these futures never came to pass is that predictive demography is not a science.