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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (301031)	8/22/2006 5:58:13 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1574102

The Fertility Gap Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply. BY ARTHUR C. BROOKS Tuesday, August 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT The midterm election looms, and once again efforts begin afresh to increase voter participation. It has become standard wisdom in American politics that voter turnout is synonymous with good citizenship, justifying just about any scheme to get people to the polls. Arizona is even considering a voter lottery, in which all voters are automatically registered for a $1 million giveaway. Polling places and liquor stores in Arizona will now have something in common. On the political left, raising the youth vote is one of the most common goals. This implicitly plays to the tired old axiom that a person under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart (whereas one who is still a liberal after 30 has no head). The trouble is, while most "get out the vote" campaigns targeting young people are proxies for the Democratic Party, these efforts haven't apparently done much to win elections for the Democrats. The explanation we often hear from the left is that the new young Democrats are more than counterbalanced by voters scared up by the Republicans on "cultural issues" like abortion, gun rights and gay marriage. But the data on young Americans tell a different story. Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today. Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies. The fertility gap doesn't budge when we correct for factors like age, income, education, sex, race--or even religion. Indeed, if a conservative and a liberal are identical in all these ways, the liberal will still be 19 percentage points more likely to be childless than the conservative. Some believe the gap reflects an authentic cultural difference between left and right in America today. As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation." It would appear liberals have been quite successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party. Of course, politics depends on a lot more than underlying ideology. People vote for politicians, not parties. Lots of people are neither liberal nor conservative, but rather vote on the basis of personalities and specific issues. But all things considered, if the Democrats continue to appeal to liberals and the Republicans to conservatives, getting out the youth vote may be increasingly an exercise in futility for the American left. Democratic politicians may have no more babies left to kiss. Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, is the author of "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," forthcoming from Basic Books. opinionjournal.com

To: TimF who wrote (301031)	8/22/2006 10:28:38 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 1574102

The good thing about low birth rates is that stagflation (such as the US experienced in the seventies as a result of the baby boom moving out and forming families) never occurs. Another good thing is you never get a bubble of retirees threatening to put a sudden burden on the retirement system (such as the imminent baby boom retirement). The bad thing is that the economy slowly collapses.

To: TimF who wrote (301031)	8/23/2006 1:35:43 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574102

Demographically, Europe should be doing well. I'm not sure why they should be, but they aren't. That's funny......one of my German friends and I were talking about that very subject. He gave me some reasons why Germany's population is sagging but I think the best one is the situation with he and his girl friend. They are both in their early to mid 30s. She's an architect and couldn't find work in Germany so she took a job in London. Meanwhile he is still working in Germany for Volkswagon. He's talking about applying for a job in London but keeps hesitating for a number reasons......first he likes his job and second, his English isn't as good as his girlfriend's and so he's afraid he will have trouble getting a job. So......even if he gets a job tomorrow, it will take at least two years for them to be settled enough to have a kid assuming they are ready.....at this time, they are not sure they are ready to make that committment to each other. Meanwhile time keeps moving on.....remember too that most Germans who go to the university rarely finish school before they are 25......so everything is delayed.