The shrinking US....

 

 

"American families can expect to spend almost $250,000 in the next 17 years raising a child"

USA  Today
December 24, 2012

 

Years ago, there was a best selling book out called The Birth Dearth. It was an insightful book written by an author named Ben Wattenburg. This book, published in 1987, talked about the shrinking birth rate for most western civilization countries, specifically in the white community. Well folks - it has happened in Europe and is now happening right here in the good old US of A.

Now call me old fashioned, but I always thought one of our jobs while visiting this orb was to propagate the species. True, not everyone is able to do it - however, if you are able, you should. When my wife and I were going through marriage counseling prior to entering into matrimony, the pastor asked us if we wanted to have kids. We both answered to the affirmative. He then said "If you wait until you can afford to have children, you will never have them." How very true those words were.

According to Moneymorning.com on July 8, 2013:

And, as I discussed earlier, we are now seeing that mothers of fewer children are generally much happier than mothers of larger broods.
Combine all of this with student debt in this country being completely out of control, Obamacare hitting the pockets of our younger population the most, the dismal job market...
You can see why young people are having fewer children, and waiting longer to have them.

According to the CDC, birth rates have dropped by 1% between 2011 and 2012. 
In fact, the U.S. birthrate has steadily declined by approximately 9% since reaching a historic high in 2007.

What China is now finding out is the smaller family policy it adopted a while ago does have its drawbacks. It is referred to economically as the "reverse pyramid". There is just not enough young people to support the aging older population. Think that might happen here? Look at our world famous Ponzi Scheme, aka Social Security. When Social Security first started out, there were 16 people working to support one retiree. Today the ratio is 3.3 working to support one retiree. In twenty years it is estimated to be 2 working to support one retiree. As the expression goes "Do the math". Because of shrinking numbers alone, our Ponzi Scheme will soon collapse under its own weight.

How bad is the decline in births? Here is a real stunner from the Daily Caller in June 2013:

The decline in the U.S. white population has been occurring more quickly than expected, resulting in the first “natural decrease” for whites — deaths exceeding births — in more than a century.

The demographics don't lie. Americans, especially the white population are shrinking, and shrinking fast. This is a big problem now that will be a giant problem in the future. We will have to increase the numbers of immigrants if for nothing else, to fill the bottom of the retirement pyramid. Our future looks - well, smaller. Quite a bit smaller, and quite a bit different.