If there is one word that captures many Europeans’ response to the continent’s financial crisis, it is denial. Witness the description by the editors of France’s newspaper-of-record, Le Monde , of France’s S&P credit-downgrade on January 13 as ” un non-événement financier .” The fact that this “non-event” will increase France’s borrowing-costs (not to mention those of the EU’s own bailout fund) at a time when France’s government is already struggling to contain spending apparently escaped Le Monde’ s attention. This habit of ignoring reality, however, goes beyond blinkered reactions to one-off occurrences. It’s also reflected in many Europeans’ perceptible inability to acknowledge some of the deeper dynamics driving the crisis. Here most of us think of unaffordable welfare states and other sinking ships to which many Europeans cling like limpets. But there is one element at work in Europe’s crisis that even fewer Europeans will openly acknowledge: the economic forces set in motion by Europe’s slow-motion population implosion. The demographic facts concerning European population-trends are clear. The replacement level for a population (what keeps it stable) is a fertility-rate of 2.1 children per woman. According to the UN, the average fertility-rate of European women was 1.53 between 2005 and 2010. The figures for Greece (1.46), Spain (1.41), Portugal (1.36), Italy (1.38), and Germany (1.36) were especially depressing. France (1.97), Britain (1.83), and Sweden (1.9) did marginally better. Ireland alone managed to attain the 2.1 threshold. All these figures represented decline from 1955-1960 rates : Greece (2.27), Spain (2.7), Portugal (3.29), Italy (2.29), Germany (2.3), France (2.7), Britain (2.49), Sweden (2.23), and Ireland (3.58). These developments translate into more old people, fewer young people, and, eventually, shrinking populations. But it also shifts what’s called “the dependency ratio”: the ratio of retirees per member of the labor force. On some estimates , Italy, Spain and Germany will have very high dependency ratios by 2050: every two workers will be supporting one retiree. Those working will also have to pay either greater contributions or higher taxes to fund existing pension systems. The present situation is further worsened by another ominous trend: the growing exodus of tens of thousands of young EU citizens searching for work to Latin America, North America, and Asia. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to the EU from developing nations are heading home. The odds that many will return to Europe in the near-future are dim. These facts have made some Europeans willing to ponder the necessity of labor-market and welfare reform, not least because those countries that have weathered the crisis better than others (e.g., Germany and Sweden) actually implemented such changes in the 2000s. Getting Europeans to talk publicly about the continent’s population-trends and their economic consequences, however, is a different matter. Why? One reason is that many Europeans have long been in thrall to the over-population gospel. Long before Paul Erhlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) — whose doomsday future-scenarios of a world devastated by famines, mass disease, and social unrest unleashed by overpopulation never materialized — numerous European economists had bought into this thesis. In 1798, the Anglican vicar and one of the first modern economists, Thomas Malthus, published his Essay on the Principle of Population . This argued that growing populations would produce an increasing labor-supply. The result, Malthus insisted, would be lower wages and therefore mass poverty. “The power of population,” he claimed, “is so superior to the power of the Earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.” Another English philosopher-economist, John Stuart Mill, was so convinced by Malthusian arguments that he actually spent time in London parks distributing birth-control pamphlets to bemused onlookers. By the 20th century, plenty of other prominent European economists were getting into the act. Knut Wicksell, a Swede whose thought was immensely influential upon often otherwise-opposed economic schools of thought, loudly proclaimed depopulation’s economic benefits. Likewise the German economist Wilhelm Röpke conjured up visions of a world overrun by teeming masses unless birth rates radically declined. (Oddly enough, John Maynard Keynes was one of the few economists to abandon his earlier Malthusian views and argue — to the British Eugenics Society no less! — that population-growth helped create demand and thereby fuel prosperity.) But it’s not just economists who have propagated anti-natalist positions. For decades, European governments have been pushing population-control programs upon developing nations (including trying to force them to legalize abortion) by making foreign-aid dependent upon adopting such policies. The phrase “neo-colonialism” comes to mind. Then there’s the Swiss theologian Hans Küng who — as if locked in a 1970s time warp — avowed in 2010 that the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception was facilitating “overpopulation.” And, as always, we have environmentalists adamantly maintaining that population growth is putting the planet’s future at risk. The existential scale of Europe’s present economic crisis may, however, at last be providing space for those Europeans unconvinced by neo-Malthusian orthodoxies to crack the consensus on these matters. One such figure is Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the Italian economist who heads the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (otherwise known as “the Vatican Bank”). In article after article, Tedeschi has observed that graying and dwindling European populations imply not only reduced demand but also higher tax burdens on those who are young and working. The resulting shrinkage of disposable income discourages those of child-bearing years from having more children. This in turn gradually narrows the dependency ratio, thereby creating even greater strains on Europe’s already-tottering welfare states and over-loaded tax base. So while deficit-reduction and welfare reform matters, perhaps the biggest long-term test for Europe is to break the vicious cycle fueled by population aging and decline that could worsen the already-bleak fiscal future for young Europeans. But this will require many Europeans to do something they find even more difficult than scaling back welfare programs. And that is to break through the politically correct taboos that presently strangle objective discussion of Europe’s population challenges, and concede their miscalculation of the economics of population. I’m not holding my breath.
Originally posted here:
Europe in Demographic Denial
There is, so I’m told, a species of genre fiction known in the trade as “young adult” — intended for teenagers who are presumably diffident about their ability to appreciate grown-up literature. When I was a young adult, or even a teenager, I would have felt insulted by the assumption that I couldn’t cope with fiction, or anything else, intended for old adults, adults tout court , but perhaps kids today are flattered by the publishing industry’s attention just to them. The counterpart of these books in the era before niche marketing were “adventure yarns” by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson or John Buchan. These characteristically featured a young adult male going to war, or battling spies or pirates, and readers liked them because they were of an age to be doing such things themselves and did so vicariously (at least) through their heroes. Well, you can see the problem. In the eyes of many if not most parents and pedagogues these days, war is no longer to be considered a great adventure but a moral blot on the human race and something that no young person should aspire to be a part of. Even spies and pirates deserve our compassion, not our enmity. Accordingly, young adult literature seeks to inspire that compassion in those who would once have preferred risk, excitement, or blood lust. A good example is to be found in the work of the man described
The chefs , or leaders, of this group were three young men, one of whom doubled as chef-de-cuisine , cook, and two young women who seconded him while keeping an eye on the half-dozen girls who had joined the camp, as we called it, and who of course had their own room apart from the larger room where the rest of us, ten to 14 boys as I recall, bunked. The chefs had their sleeping bags on the straw in the attic, which they accessed through a narrow spiral staircase in the corner of the common room whose two pieces of furniture were a long table and benches made of what must have been oak and a poêle , what we would call a Franklin stove, that ran on fuel oil and was the only source of heat outside the kitchen, which is why we all spent most of our waking time there when we were not out of doors on the mountain. This was not formally a scout camp but it was a pure emanation of the scout movement as it existed then in France, except for the girls and their young chaperones. The oldest of our chefs was not 24, already had done his service militaire , and his two assistants, close friends actually, were waiting the call-up of their class. The girls had come along this year due to some subtle or not so subtle pressures from parents upon the elders of the church that sponsored the troop to which most of the boys including the older ones belonged, or maybe it was the older boys who pressured their elders or maybe some girls in the church said they wanted in, that it was not fair there should be one winter camp every year and it was only for the boys. But I do not think it was that either, because some of the girls were Catholic and one was Jewish, which actually left just three Protestants plus the two older girls, making five. I think it was just a case of friends; the older boys had invited friends or girl friends whom they knew from the church or more likely from school and the elders or whoever was ultimately responsible said, “After all, why not, there are two rooms in that cabin, aren’t there?” and Jean-Luc, who was the top man and had organized trips to the same place in previous years and was 24 years old and back from Algeria where he had taken a slug in the leg, said, “Of course there are two rooms, you do not think this is an Israeli kibbutz, do you?” He did not say anything about the attic because they did not ask him and he figured what they did not know would not hurt them. I did not know anything about kibbutzim, nor did anyone in fact, but Jean-Luc was extremely interested in them and though he had not been to Israel he was planning a trip and already had the contacts with Mapam friends and others he knew. He was very big on the kibbutz movement because, he said, during one of the grandes discussions into which the evenings around the Franklin stove usually evolved after dinner and a few songs and some board and card games, it represented a fulfillment, or at least a stage on the way to fulfillment, of the message of the Gospel, on which he was keen. Most of us kids, 11, 12 years old, did not follow very well and anyway we were exhausted by the time les grands , the older ones, got into these big serious bull sessions, having been rousted at dawn to wash up with cold water and get assigned tasks, the most popular of which was to run down the hill with Mathieu, the cook, to the bakery to get the day’s supply of bread. By the time we got back another team had set the long table with big bowls in which you poured either cocoa or coffee and warm milk and plates on which to spread margarine and jam over your bread. Blessing, thanks, as fast as possible, gobble up, half-listen to Jean-Luc’s announcements regarding anything we should know, and off in a rush to the shed where the skis were kept except for the young chaperones who stayed with the cook to clean up — breakfast cleanup being the one task we were excused from due to the ski-school schedule — and caught up with their wards later, not that it really mattered since at that point they would be under the strict eye of the moniteurs , instructors, the tough old mountain men and women whose idea of teaching you how to ski included making you walk up the mountain with skis on the shoulder. Anyway, there were hardly any ski lifts in those days at the little village of Notre-Dame-de-Bellecombe, and quite a few people who were not kids mobilized by a hardy gang of evangelical scout leaders carried their skis on their shoulders and made their way up the hills. You learned a lot from those instructors, they kept shifting the order of the class as they took it down the hills to insure that every kid regularly found himself immediately behind the teacher whose terse command was to mimic every move he made, arm, knee, torso. We improved fast, which we knew because in the afternoon when we had free time on the slopes we went faster every day. We thought so, anyway, and we also thought we would be soon joining the alpine troopers whom we sometimes spied in the distance, white clad and carrying full loads of gear including weapons, practicing and drilling out of nearby barracks. If not them, the paras , the paratroopers who, as best we understood the bits of news that registered in our children’s consciousness of the vast world beyond our own small one, had won the war in Algeria and were everyone’s idea of heroes with their smart berets and rolled up sleeves and the short machine guns (as best we guessed) they carried in the pictures and the newsreels. None of my pals understood that we were learning a few other new things in addition to wintersport skills. I happened to be there, by the way, because I had made some fast friends in my very early childhood in Paris and, with my father posted to another European capital after several years in Washington, they had invited me to this winter camp, and we had stayed in touch by letters — kids were taught to write letters back then — and our mothers all agreed it was a good idea to encourage such charming childhood friendships to continue, as they in fact did. We probably did not even think about this until many years later, nor did it occur to us to consider the singular happenstance of these friends of mine being the sons of families belonging to one of the few but also one of the most influential Protestant congregations in France. But though we would have laughed at the notion had it been suggested at the time, in fact we were enjoying, or should I say taking an interest in, what was going on in the cabin almost as much as on those hills in the Savoie, somewhere — I must look it up on the map — between Italy and the great Mont Blanc, highest peak in Europe. We might doze off, but we did not giggle or snicker or mimic when les grands , the big guys, got into their heated political discussions or when we caught a hint, a hint we scarcely comprehended even as we sensed its meaning, of something going on in that attic that we also sensed was not to be talked about and never, at all, mentioned to parents when we got home and told them what a great adventure it had been and how much progress we had made in the downhill and the slalom. On the contrary, we tacitly and silently agreed among ourselves that even if we did not know what we were learning it was something we needed to learn and in its own good time its meaning would become clear. Jean-Luc never missed a chance to bring his fascination with the kibbutz movement into whatever was at issue. Someone in the heat of debate complained that the left had to find a way out of the Scylla and Charibdis of ” l’Otan [NATO] ou les Soviets ,” he was ready with the escape hatch provided by ” le socialisme sioniste ” which offered a model of ” communauté d’ésprit ” as well as ” progrès social . ” Someone brought up — someone always brought up — the fighting in Algeria, he was quick to explain that the recent Suez affair (whatever that was) proved ” un gouvernement de gauche ” could devise a successful military campaign and not find itself forced to surrender power to a military authoritarian of the right, as had happened here — and, he added, “their generals, their politicians, are from the kibbutz movement.” The brief Biblical exegesis that followed dinner did not ordinarily set the theme for these arguments about French politics and international affairs (which the older members of our group always kept civil), but one time it did. It had been Jean-Luc’s turn and he had discussed the miracle of the loaves. He concluded: “This means when it is necessary to do something, you do something. This,” he added with Calvinist severity, “does not do anything for you, dont le salut depend uniquement de la foi ["for your salvation comes only by faith"], but you do it anyway. Moreover, I want to give you an example, because tomorrow is Christmas.” He mentioned that the few Catholics among us were going to Mass at midnight and of course everyone was invited. “The one who came to save us, after all, first had to be protected. So let me tell you about Le Chambon.” “You all know, he said, that in late 1942, the German army put an end to the fiction of a ‘free zone’ and occupied the southern part of France.” The relative safety of the territory under the Vichy government’s control evaporated. Well, there was a village in Auvergne called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, on a plateau [he meant a topographical elevation] that had been for two centuries a Protestant enclave. The whole area was viscerally anti-fascist and became a sanctuary for the Resistance. “In particular,” Jean-Luc went on, “the pastors organized a continual flight toward Switzerland of Jewish children, as well as British pilots and Gaullist agents who had accomplished a mission and needed to get out.” The pastors he referred to were two extraordinary men, André Trocmé and Edouard Theis. Both became pacifists and anti-fascists during the years of totalitarianism’s rise between the world wars, but they were anything but passive. Admitting the failure of pacifism to stop the Nazis, they in effect joined those who believed the fight had to continue. The village and the surrounding neighborhoods became the most important hiding place and escape hatch for French Jews (as well as anti-Nazis on the run). “There were five thousand people in Le Chambon and the nearby hamlets, perhaps four times that many on the plateau, most of whom were of our Reformed tradition,” Jean-Luc said, with a gesture that everyone understood showed he was not excluding anyone or making any thing special of the denomination to which the église de la rue Madame , of which his family was a pillar, belonged. As a practical matter, he said, they all resisted. (” En fait, ils passerent tous à la Résistance .”) “Trocmé had been preaching for years that those the fascists persecuted were our brothers,” and here Jean-Luc paused just a moment to let his eyes meet those of his little band here who had not grown up in his church. “Three, four thousand Jews, mainly children. Thousands of others: English pilots, maquisards (underground fighters), Communists. Trocmé did not doubt they were his brothers in Christ. When they arrested him and Theis and many others, his wife Magda took over the leadership, continued the lifeline. The Vichy police dragged its feet, was lax. Many of them warned the villagers when a raid was coming. Were they converted, or at least convinced? I do not know. But they sensed the villagers had something — a weapon stronger than their authority. “You see, a village can be made of simple people, that is not the point.” (Most of these villagers were farmers.) “The point is that they had faith. They had what Andre Trocmé called the weapons of the spirit. But you see, the real point is that they knew they had to do this for no other reason than that it had to be done. “If you ask them,” Jean-Luc concluded, “and I have talked to people who were there, if you ask them why they did this, why they risked their lives and, many times, gave them, and often under torture, they do not understand your question. They felt blessed to have had this opportunity, but they did not for a moment think it did anything for their souls or earned them any credit. “One said to me, guileless [" tout simplement "], ‘Who wouldn’t have?’” Jean-Luc paused, waited a few moments. He signaled to one of his deputies to go into a carol, popular in French Reformed as well as Catholic communities, the youth started it, the young women joined in and then everyone. It probably exists in English too, but I always remember it in French — ” Il est né le divin enfant …” Then he mentioned again, with only a slight tone of if-it-matters-to-anyone, that since nos pétites soeurs catholiques (“our little Catholic sisters,” with just a grain of irony that none of us kids picked up until we talked about it many years later) were going to Midnight Mass, he proposed to join them. Everybody went, and I can assure you, the next day everyone in that cabin thought about the weapons of the spirit, even the little kids who could scarcely sense what these might be. Jean-Luc was a focused youth, full of character and purpose. He went on to medical school, I believe, but those of my friends who knew him and his family lost touch as they grew up and went their own ways, and I am not sure what became of him. No, I take that back, I am quite sure what became of him.
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The Weapons of the Spirit
“We did everything, the chancellor and I, to allow the British to take part in the agreement. But there are now clearly two Europes,” Sarkozy said in an interview with the French daily Le Monde. “One wants more solidarity between its members and more regulation. The other is attached only to the logic of the single market,” he said. (HT: Canada.com) At the recent EU emergency summit, David Cameron, Britain’s Prime Minister, stood alone. Out of the 26 members of The European Union, he was the lone, recalcitrant hold-out. He was the kid nobody thought was cool. He also did his job by vetoing the proposed EU agreement. Cameron, as US President Andrew Jackson once said of any man of integrity, was a majority of one. The Germans knew that they would be providing a lot of bailout money to their poorer neighbors. Germany wanted to start controlling how other governments in Europe spent their money. Not directly, but rather through giving the EU the ability to penalize and direct activities in member countries who didn’t meet certain economic objectives. They also wanted to significantly curtail the individual freedom enjoyed by banks and financial institutions. Germany – Europe’s biggest economy – was intent on changing the European Union’s treaty to enshrine stricter budget discipline and penalties for countries that failed to adhere to them, to ensure there could be no repeat of the current crisis. From the German perspective, only by reforming economies, cutting social benefits and working longer would the indebted members of the euro zone and the single currency project itself emerge from the turmoil. Great Britain, which derives 10% of its GDP from financial institutions, had no intention of giving Germany or the EU as a whole, a radio dial by which they could control British economic productivity. Thus, when the other 26 members agreed to the German demands and refused to let British financial institutions out of the latest EU deal, Cameron exploited the fundamental weakness of all Polish Democracies and cast his veto. At this point, Cameron’s image in Europe fell victim to popular outrage against banks. The voting masses of Continental Europe currently blame banks and financial institutions for much of what has happened to their fortunes and their nations in recent years. This anger is not entirely unjustified. Countries in Southern Europe that are implementing forcible reductions in their governmental spending resented both Germany and Great Britain. Megan Greene of Roubini Global Economics describes this point of view. “In and of itself these proposals aren’t fiscal union at all. They just really institutionalize the asymmetric adjustment that’s been occurring in the euro zone already with the peripheral countries making all of the adjustment, (and) the core countries making none of it,” said Megan Greene, senior economist at Roubini Global Economics. “And it just means that as the peripheral countries continue to implement harsh austerity measures, it will undermine GDP growth. So we won’t see growth in the euro zone for a few years as long as this is the case.” What the Continentals all missed, and what David Cameron assuredly hasn’t, is the fact that the EU Politboro in Brussels has climbed far outside its appropriate useful function. Neither the Prime Minister of Greece, not The Prime Minister of Italy has ascended to their current sinecure through victory in a democratic election. Both men were technocrats subservient to the wishes of the EU. The recent ascension of The Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt was a more honest reflection of the will of the governed. The Hour of The British Euroskeptic has come. It has come due to the essential necessity of restoring limits to the “emergency Powers” that the EU seems to have laid it’s grubby hands upon. When Rahm Emmanuel spoke of the necessity of “never letting a crisis go to waste,” this is precisely the sort of assumption of power that most people were afraid he was speaking of. It also has to make Euroskeptics wonder how disappointed the EU would feel if the crisis were to be solved before they got their hands on too much more of other people’s freedom and power. And that is a question more people should ask of any governmental leader who asks for more power to resolve an “emergency.”
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How Britain Became Great Again
Friday Today, lords, has been a busy day. I am in New York at the Essex House. I got up at 6 a.m., New York time, which is 3 a.m., my time. I pulled my fat old self together, had a bagel and orange juice, then headed over to CBS for the Early Show . It was fun. The hosts there are invariably charming. Then a round of TV shows and interviews that lasted the whole day. The shows just went on and on. My favorite was at Fox with my pal, Neil Cavuto. We talked about Herman Cain and how he had been pushed around by the media. I told Neil that I was endlessly amazed that the media thought it had the moral standing to judge others. There is a powerful story in the New Testament that goes something like this: While Jesus was nearby, the Pharisees called him into the temple to see a woman who had been taken in adultery. The head Pharisee said to Jesus, “The Mosaic law says she is to be stoned. What do you think?” Jesus was writing something on the ground and he looked up and asked the woman, “Is this true? Were you taken in adultery?” The woman said, “Yes, Lord, I was.” Jesus said, to this effect, “Yes, then she should be stoned. Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” The Pharisees, stung, muttered, then slunk off in shame until none was left and Jesus kept writing on the ground. Then he looked up and saw that all of the accusers had left and said to the woman, “Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.” So, who in the media is without sin among us? I am in the media and I am a major league sinner. I don’t know anyone except my wife who isn’t a big time sinner. We in the media are just people with all of people’s faults. We’re today’s Pharisees, judging everybody else. And they take it! That’s how I feel about Mr. Cain. Yes, maybe he is a sinner. WHO THE HECK ISN’T? I wonder if some day some sharp cookie will do some investigation of media powers to see how without sin they are. Nahh. Never happen. Anyway, it was a full day. I went back to my room and took a long, long nap with my big beautiful wifey. She did not want to go out in the cold, so about 9 p.m. I put on my woolen coat (my good Republican cloth coat, as RN called Mrs. Nixon’s coat) and headed out the door. I stopped at a little grocery store to buy some mints and fell into a short but charming conversation with a short but charming Albanian chanteuse named Ani Shine. I bought her a pack of gum. She gave me a rainbow. Then I headed east and down Fifth Avenue. I stopped at the St. Regis to buy a Diet Coke in the King Cole Bar. A tall, cheery woman talked to me cheerily about her world of advertising. I think she knew I was famous but she wasn’t letting on. I drank my Diet Coke and headed south. I’ve told you a million times about how I used to meet up with my Pop at the King Cole Bar when he was at the Committee for Economic Development and I was at Columbia. The place makes me emotional. It has been totally rearranged but it still makes me emotional. That portrait of Old King Cole used to hang in a big room. Now it’s in the small bar, but I still love it. Maxfield Parrish painted it in the days of wine and roses. How I miss my Pop. There was a fantastic crowd around Rockefeller Center looking at the Christmas tree. Hardly anyone spoke English. But they were a good-looking bunch by and large. Lots of cute Russians. The East Europeans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians, all really great looking. A Hispanic man wanted his picture taken with me. I stood between his wife and him. He told me he was in the Army and was headed for Afghanistan the next day. “You’re a star,” I said. “A real star.” His wife started to cry. I hugged her. Then I hugged him and gave him my e-mail and told him if he wanted me to send him anything, I would. What will it be like for him going from this lushness around 49th and Fifth and heading for some dusty miserable spot in Afghanistan where people will try to kill him? Will he even believe there is a place like the ice skating rink at the Rockefeller Center or will he think he dreamt it? Meanwhile, what was Jesus writing in the dust? Then back down south. A taxi came within inches of running me over at 47th and Fifth. He was running a light and almost killed me. Then left at 44th, past Brooks Brothers, and then into the Yale Club. As I went in the revolving door, a middle aged woman with short, close cropped blond hair with one red streak, grabbed me. “Let’s go to the bar and have a drink,” she whispered. She was drunk. I mean, there is drunk and
