The death of that many people did not cause the Renaissance, and to suggest so is absurd. Advancements in technology and thought caused the Renaissance. The rise in wages, and social changes are characteristics of any major time of prosperity. Many of these same things happened during the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, or the American Revolution. There was no mass die off before those events, however.
The Industrial Revolution happened when European countries were doing a great deal of colonization, meaning that you did have people living in previously uninhabited or low population areas. Once you had the option of leaving the rigid social structures of overpopulated Europe, you have the freedom to innovate.
We did kill quite a few Indians here in America, so I would say that having a die-off or diaspora can alter the distribution of resources and quality of life in any given society.
More people=more demand for goods and services. This means more people are employed to provide these goods and services. The fact is, having less children does not equal more economic success.
I'm guessing this only works if you judge economic health based on
consumption and not on
costs of resources consumed (human effort as well, for it can be excellent for the construction industry for a hurricane to wipe out New Orleans, it "stimulates" a certain economy, but from the perspective of whole economics you just lost something and now you have to expend resources and manpower to replace it. Resources and manpower that could go into another project). We might have 6 billion people on the planet, but who's to say whether 80% of them are even doing work that's
worthwhile? They might be working to feed and clothe some unnecessary excess of population, some crooked politician might be looking for new ways to steal money, etc. How much economic work is crass maintenance of the lumbering behemoth rather than an effort to move forward, real progress in short?
That's hardly a factor in every country other than the US that I pointed out.
Here I thought a lot of the EU countries with low birthrates have a Muslim problem...now I wonder if that have anything to do with the jackass notion that immigrants are needed to keep health care and retirement benefits afloat?
Japan's population is already starting to decline, and within 100 years will be at early 1900's levels.
Great! Maybe one day they won't be overpopulated
Those damn ragheads! Why isn't the Middle East a giant glass parking lot yet?!!?!?!
It could have something to do with living in a desert, and they do have quite a bit of warfare down there.
Oh they have. It's called social security.
That isn't personal responsibility. That's giving your money to a Mafia-style organization who will put an I.O.U. in the cookie jar and rough up some of your neighbors down the street so you can get a fraction of the protection money you put in.
And you would plan on doing this how? Killing everything that moves in the third world, and killing a large amount of the first world? Just sterilization wouldn't be fast enough for you, so culling is the ideal, right?
My plan involves me personally not having children and informing others that this choice is possible for them. As you have pointed out in your rebuttal, what I see as the shouldering of personal responsibility in order to build a better society...you see as the Devil. I'm offering an alternative to war and the struggle for limited resources...whether or not you agree with me, humans are already displaced when their neighbors encroach, wars happen and people die.
Instead of World War 2 happening, would you have chose to live in peace with the Nazis, rather than cull some of the precious German people? All the major nations of the planet were fighting for either living space or natural resources...
Let's read from the article:
Quote:
What's driving the $209 billion increase in benefit costs from a year ago:
•Unemployment insurance. One-fourth of the extra spending covers jobless benefits, a program started in the Depression. The stimulus law, passed in February, increased benefits.
• Social Security. The bad economy has prompted a 10%-15% jump in early retirements, the program's actuary says. A 5.8% increase took effect January 1. Bottom line: $55 billion in new costs.
• Food stamps. Enrollment hit a record 33.2 million people in March, up 5.2 million from last year. The stimulus law boosted the size of the benefit. Average March benefit: $114 per person.
I didn't ask you for dollar signs, what I was asking you was the number of unemployed people who are able to work, versus people who have ordinary reasons to transition out of work. For instance, if you're not an early retiree, then you shouldn't be considered as one of the new unwashed masses when you do retire. My point is there's a number of ways statistics can be skewed, and the article is rather poor in providing in-depth demographic details. Who's to say that the requirements for getting food stamps weren't simply relaxed so more people could qualify than ever before?
It doesn't matter if you have 10 kids or 0 kids, in that situation you are still going to be poor.
You say that like you're so certain. However, I'm much more certain that if you have a pound of cornmeal between you and your wife, zero children is much better than having calories wasted on the infant corpse you've got on the dirt floor. It's called
exasperating the situation. Maybe instead of being a poor peasant with no hope, one could kill other humans, not only obtaining the nutrition from their flesh, but obtaining better local economic opportunities in the deal. Really, what is there to lose?