|
Phred
Fred's son
Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 2 months
|
Yay! Steyn is back!
#3805911 - 02/20/05 04:52 AM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
One of the wittiest, most prolific, most widely-published and politically-savvy commentators to ever come down the pike has started updating his website again. He took several months off in order to deal with some family issues and even though he continued to supply columns to many newspapers around the world (Britain, Canada, Us, Australia) he had let his website lapse. Not any longer.
Check out this gem:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html
I make it a habit to check his website daily. I suggest you all do the same. You won't be disappointed.
http://www.steynonline.com/
Phred
--------------------
|
RandalFlagg
Stranger
Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
|
Re: Yay! Steyn is back! [Re: Phred]
#3806704 - 02/20/05 01:02 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
But Bush has made it an explicit and urgent goal of U.S. foreign policy. This is a president who wants to leave his mark on more than a cocktail dress.
|
RandalFlagg
Stranger
Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
|
Re: Yay! Steyn is back! [Re: Phred]
#3807602 - 02/20/05 04:43 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
For purposes of comparison, by 2050 public pensions expenditures are expected to be 6.5 percent of GDP in the United States, 16.9 percent in Germany, 17.3 percent in Spain and 24.8 percent in Greece. In Europe, we're talking not about the prospect of having to reduce benefits but of total societal collapse.
Shit! Is that true? If so then Europe is in way worse shape than the U.S. as far as future fiscal matters go.
|
Phred
Fred's son
Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 2 months
|
|
I don't know about the number for Greece, but the numbers for Spain and Germany coincide with the stuff I've read elsewhere. I know the number for Italy is just over 20 per cent so I have no reason to disbelieve the number for Greece.
Phred
--------------------
|
JesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
|
|
Mr. Flagg, Europe is in piss poor shape any way you look at it.
Old and In The Way
Quote:
"One of the wedges forming between the U.S. and Europe is the European Union. The E.U.'s encouragement of a centralized soft socialism puts it on a very different course from the U.S. The unmistakable current in the U.S. over the last generation has been to reduce centralism and the size of government: When Ronald Reagan swept onto the scene in the early 1980s, U.S. federal spending was 24 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Today it is 19 percent. That is only half or two thirds the level in most E.U. states, where levels have been rising, not falling."
Quote:
For the European Union as a whole, GDP per capita is presently less than two thirds of U.S. levels. America's poorest sub-groups, like African Americans, now have higher average income levels than the typical European.
What's behind this? For one thing, Americans work harder: 72 percent of the U.S. population is at work, compared to only 58 percent in the E.U. American workers also put in more hours. And U.S. workers are more productive--an E.U. worker currently produces 73 cents worth of output in the same period of time a U.S. worker creates a dollar's worth.
Quote:
Germany is the European champion for subsidies to business, but that hasn't stopped the national capital of Berlin from losing 300,000 industrial jobs since 1990. Berlin now staggers, bankrupt, under a municipal debt of $60 billion. (The city's entire annual budget is $20 billion.) German welfare programs have grown so onerous that only 57 percent of worker pay now goes into worker pockets; the other 43 percent goes to taxes.
Quote:
Since 1970, America has produced 57 million new jobs. The E.U. nations, with an even bigger population, have produced 5 million (most of them with the government). A startling 40 percent of the unemployed in Europe have been out of work for more than a year, compared to only 6 percent in the U.S.
Quote:
A final, crushing, structural divergence separating America and Europe is demography. Birth rates in Europe have been catastrophically low for two decades. Europe is thus getting old and starting to shrink. The U.S. remains a youthful and fast-growing nation. It takes 2.1 lifetime births per woman just to keep a population stable over the long run. Today, German women are having less than 1.4 children each--only two thirds the level needed to maintain zero population growth. Italians and Spaniards are at a shockingly low rate of 1.2 lifetime births per woman. The E.U. as a whole is far below the level needed simply to replace its current population.
The social, economic, and geopolitical ramifications are stark. At current fertility rates, Germany's total population will shrink from 82 million to 67 million over the next 50 years. Italy will tumble from 58 to 39 million people. Over that very same period, the population of the U.S. (where the birth rate is more than half-again as high) will go from 283 to 410 million.
And it isn't only the raw numbers that will change; the composition of the population will also shift dramatically. As births remain below the replacement level year after year, and old people live longer and longer, a geometric spiral forms, and a society becomes elderly. By the end of my expected lifespan in the 2030s, fully half of all Germans will be over 50. Italians will be even older--half over 54. (The U.S., by comparison, will have a median age in the upper 30s.) The European Union will be a very gray place, and within its boundaries every single employed individual will have his own elderly person 65 or older to provide for through the public pension system. This is not a recipe for an energetic society.
-------------------- Tastes just like chicken
|
JesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
|
|
Quote:
This week's U.N. report on the Sudan nicely captures the alternative to Bush-style climate change. After months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan managed to persuade the U.N. to set up a committee to look into what's going on in Darfur. They've just reported back that it's not genocide. Phew, thank goodness for that. It turns out it's just 70,000 corpses who all happen to be from the same ethnic group; could happen anywhere. But it's not genocide, so don't worry about it.
That's the transnational establishment's alternative to Bush dynamism: Appoint a committee that agrees on the need to do nothing.
That is a good passage. I think that history will judge us all poorly for sitting on the sidelines and watching those people get slaughtered.
-------------------- Tastes just like chicken
|
|