Raising the birth rate is extremely difficult and immigration will destroy a country's culture if not managed properly.
For an interesting case study, compare Japan (who refuses to allow mass immigration and is at risk of going extinct) and the UK (who has embraced it and is on the way to becoming Muslim-majority). It'll be interesting to see in 50 years which one has had better outcomes.
This is using the same flawed logic that has had people shouting about overpopulation since the 70's: assuming current* population growth rate will continue indefinitely
The difference is that this is a change in the demographics of a population, not the overall growth, which is limited by resources available. The growth of Islam isn't constrained by anything other than the cultural practices that lead to them having more children than the rest of the population and the tolerance of the country for immigration. These things could definitely shift to balance the scales but there's no guarantee that happens and there have absolutely been many times in history where a native population has been displaced by the growth of an immigrant group.
Nicholas, is it clear that at any point in the near future, let's say two generations (30-40 years) the Muslim population will not be a majority in the UK? I don't understand why you continue arguing.
You are not making your point any favour. It is right that everyone is calling you out for your xenophonbic BS.
If it grew 10x between 2001 and 2009 (starting from a very small base), then between 2009 and 2023 it grew by only 0.3x (see graph below).
So rate of growth went from 10x to 0.3x in around a decade, this is a hugely significant deceleration. It actually implies muslim community as portion of population is heading lower.
You're not comparing the same stats. The original stat was growth rate compared to the rest of the country. Islam's overall growth rate has been fairly steady for decades, although admittedly it has slowed, but at a rate that could conceivably stop above Christianity, which your chart shows is decreasing about as rapidly as Islam is rising. I think it's reasonable to project that it may settle below Islam eventually. Realistically, there will be continued backlash by native English and that may temper immigration, though even if immigration stops, the birth rate of Muslims in the UK is still much higher than native population.
However - if we're including atheist then clearly that'll be the majority position.
Ah, it's the same argument that my mum uses to say that if we don't do something about "the gays" then straight people will disappear, after all "there are a lot more of them than there used to be".
The most recent birth rate stats I can find is 2005-2010 where Muslims have a birth rate of 3.0 while the rest of the country is at 1.8. Estimates say it's more like 2.5 now, but the current overall UK birth rate is only 1.57 from a quick Google.
Yes I know the stats hover around roughly that, which is why I requested you to post those numbers as proof for anyone questioning it. There's also the very concerning fact that the last census conducted was before the immigration boom period (2010 or 2011 iirc), so literally everyone is working on outdated data.
Maybe not in one generation, but in 2-3 generations, the UK will definitely turn Islamic, especially given the exodus of other communities. The irony is that the well-off British are settling in the UAE en masse, a distinctly Islamic country, and driving property prices up there. It's not that much of a concern since local housing is distinctly separated from expat housing.
Actually, OP has given information that proves exactly that. Maybe not in one generation, but Lebanon was in a similar situation where the Muslim population, which was firmly a minority in the 1940s, outbred the Christian population and is currently more than the latter.
I don't have a horse in this game - I'm Muslim after all. But I've experienced London pre-immigration boom and post-immigration boom and I definitely prefer the former, like some of my Muslim peers. The fabric of London has already been destroyed, especially when given the fact that London natives have been priced out of their own homes. Given what I've seen firsthand, and what's preached in the mosques of the UK by unleashed and unhinged Imams, the UK is on track to become a Muslim country in 2 or 3 generations.
Isn't it essentially a thanks/appreciation for what the people built once they retire ? Without theire work, there would be nothing for the younger people to use and benefit from.
Would not be very motivational if you work hard your whole life and then you are considered a useless burden once you retire.
And capital gains are actually property taken from the workers and given to capitalists. In both cases, the recipients have magic tokens that legally entitle them to some of the value created by other people.
I don't know how this works in other countries. In Finland, it was established decades ago that pensions based on past contributions are constitutionally protected private property. Because people made explicit pension contributions and because the government promised that the future pension would be based on the individual contributions, the government can't alter the deal substantially without a constitutional amendment. If the contributions had been general taxes, or if the promised pension had been independent of the actual contributions, ordinary legislative process would have been enough.
So have younger people too, just their life has not been as long (yet).
The way it usually works is taxation from the current working generation pays for the current retirees. You are not paying into your own account for later (that is a private pension)
FWIW in the UK there are more children in poverty (so their parents too) than retirees who are in poverty. Kids don't vote though...
IMHO it's a matter of basic justice. If you're forced to pay an amount for pension funds that you cannot even chose and have no control over for your whole work life, then you better should get a an adequate pension when it's time. As for the example from the UK (not comparable to Denmark), I don't see why someone who worked their ass off their whole life should be poor because some parents are too poor to have children. That seems to be a different problem.
What's annoying about these debates is that the people who'd e.g. like to see pension cuts are either young and will change their mind later, or they are so rich that none of this matters to them anyway and the latter shouldn't even have a voice in this debate.
> I don't see why someone who worked their ass off their whole life should be poor because some parents are too poor to have children.
The issue is the "triple lock" (state pension rises by whichever is higher of either rate of inflation, average earnings increases, or 2.5%).
While laudable in intent, recently this has led to situations where pensioners are getting bumper increases linked to high inflation, while the younger working age people are getting stagnant wages while inflation shoots up.
This is is why pensioners are on average getting wealthier than the working population. Let that settle in for a moment: year after year pensioners are getting more wealthy than the working population that is financing the pensioner's increase in wealth.
This is universally accepted as unsustainable and deeply unfair on an intergenerational basis as the pensioners - who generally tend to own their own homes and also get various benefits like free transport and extra money for heating costs etc as well as benefiting from more generous policies/working conditions of the past like free university education and final-salary private pensions or purchasing government-built social housing at steeply-discounted rates, lower tax burden - continue to get more and more well-off while the people financing their retirement are struggling with soaring costs, expensive childcare, high education costs, zero-hour contracts, stagnant wages and all the rest.
Yet pensioners complain that they paid their taxes "all their lives" so they deserve to continue getting a bigger and bigger slice of the pie, that they deserve to get wealthier and wealthier than the working population, all at the cost of pushing more children below the poverty line and financially crippling the current workers who have also paid their taxes all their lives (so far).
Eventually with policies like these, you run out of other people's money.
Trouble is that it is a political landmine since pensioners are a big part of the vote so no one has the balls to abolish (or at least reform) the triple lock.
It's not a choice. You're forced to pay for the pension system in Denmark and most other countries if you're employed. The only thing governments have to do is to use that money for actual pension funds instead of embezzling it, and to calculate the contributions on a reasonable basis with reasonable extrapolations about inflation, i.e., to properly finance these funds now and not abuse them for other purposes.
It's mysterious why they haven't done that despite the fact that the demographic problems were known to occur up to 40 years ago. But you see the same thing with housing prices and rents, forthcoming problems were already obvious 20 years ago in every country, yet only few have tried to deal with them in time. Maybe someone else can explain where this inertia comes from, I always found it strange.
I feel like there really hasn't been sincere data-backed methods with proper resources behind them, for example governments giving out minor cash benefits to parents of a few thousand dollars when that's a drop in the bucket compared to the total cost of raising a kid and is not going to convince anyone who wasn't already going to have kids.
Also, that's a wild solution. You'd have to do away with monogamy which would cause some pretty insane societal shifts. However, as a straight guy I can see the appeal lol.
The issue with low TFR seems to be difficulty of forming relationships, not failure to have children once relationships are formed.
I'm imagining it becoming a social norm for single women to have (at least) a single child. Perhaps they'd team up to make raising them easier, forming loose family-like units. Romantic attachments would be optional.
One consequence of such a situation would be an incentive toward private positive eugenics. Women would prefer semen from top quality donors.
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The first time you take a ride in one is really amazing, it really makes you think "I'm living in the future." I recommend anyone visiting SF take one.
I'm at Meta, I like using it for the most part. The chat could be improved upon but overall I really like having Facebook-like Groups and I don't think any other platform has something like that.
In my mind, "move in a straight line due east" can be interpreted as "for as long as you are moving, your movement should be due east". In that case, your latitude will never change. In the northern hemisphere, you will constantly be making a leftward adjustment to maintain a due east heading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility