There's So Many of Us There's So Many of Us

Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop served another ace last week with her piece about the US population reaching 300 million people. She decried “Babbitry” about population growth being necessary to keep our economy booming. Bravo, that angle always sounded like a pyramid scheme to me. If we’re concerned about the Social Security system’s solvency, we ought to insist that our representatives stop spending the money we pay into it and not look for a baby boom or wave of immigrants to pick up the tab. I’ve heard no-choice people bemoan the toll birth control and abortion have taken on our population and suspect that they’re seeking fodder for the end-time prophesies they’re trying to fulfill. Business seeks youngsters and immigrants to do the jobs Americans won’t do. Listen, business has always used any available means to keep down wages, including exploitation, oppression, and murder. They’ve always relied on our government to back them up with cops and troops. It’s high time they let those market forces they’re always raving about do their magic. Speaking of jobs Americans won’t do, immigrants make up 5% of armed forces personnel. I believe that a broad based draft system, or universal service, (children of congressmen first?) would reduce military adventurism, and might even bring us foreign policies we could be proud of.
Some who worry about our birthrate are really concerned that this country is changing color. Remember when David Duke got out of prison he said he was going off to raise lots of blonde babies. These folks are going the way of the dinosaurs. Good riddance.Ms. Harrop cited the Negative Population Growth group’s aim of stabilizing, then, reducing our population to the 150 million we were in the 1950’s. Sounds good to me. Remember Paul Erlich’s Zero Population Growth in the ‘60’s? There were only 200 million of us then. It’s time we used education, policy initiatives, and tax incentives to get our numbers trending in the right direction, and use trade and immigration as levers to encourage other countries to do the same. There’s so many of us.