Category Archives: demographics

Why This Is About To Get Far Worse…by Chris Hamilton

Posted on May 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

Demographically, across the developed world robust growth is not in the cards . From Chris Hamilton at economica.com:

Once upon a time, skeptical analysts cross checked stated growth versus energy consumption…looking for discrepancies as fluctuations in energy consumption are a good proxy for the changes in real economic activity.

Nowadays, the model of printing highly politicized and/or skewed economic data has gone very global.  So, today I offer a couple broad variables to gauge global economic activity; 1) total primary energy consumption data by region, cross checked against 2) their consumer bases (the 0-65yr/old populations).  I break the world down into four different regions to gain a better vantage of the purported global recovery, as follows:

  • OECD (List of 35 nations) representing 17% of global population & 43% of total energy consumption
  • Combined Africa / S. Asia (S. Asia = India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives) representing 41% of global population & 9% of total energy consumption
  • China, representing 19% of global population & 22% of energy consumption
  • “RoW” or Rest of the World, representing 23% of global population & 26% of global energy consumption

The first chart below shows total global primary energy consumption in quadrillion BTU’s from 1980 through 2015 according to the EIA (US Energy Information Administration).  The flattening in consumption since 2012 is plainly visible in the upper right and clearly detailed in the year over year columns in the lower right.  The arrows highlight minimal growth or outright energy consumption declines that were associated with recessionary periods.  The weakness of the current period since 2012 is unparalleled from 1980 on…and even more significant than the sharp but brief downturn of 2009.

To continue reading: Why This Is About To Get Far Worse…

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“No Longer Reversible”: China’s Low Fertility Rate And Birth Restrictions Set Stage For Disaster, by Tyler Burden

Posted on May 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

As in most of the developed world, in China the ratio of elderly to the number of productive younger people who will support is inexorably climbing. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

While China has embarked on ambitious plans for economic and military domination over the next several decades, they may end up defeating themselves without a single shot fired – thanks to their longstanding birth restrictions, shrinking fertility rate and exploding elderly population.

Economically speaking, the problem is easy to understand; a shrinking labor pool due to restrictive reproductive laws tends to drive up wages, while a rapidly growing elderly population requires more spending on pensions and health care. “In a worse-case scenario, slowing growth and a labor shortage could leave China unable to care for hundreds of millions of retirees,” notes the Wall Street Journal.

China’s clinging to birth restrictions defies a clear demographic trend: Its workforce is shrinking and the population is rapidly aging. By 2050, there will be 1.3 workers for each retiree, according to official estimates, compared with 2.8 now.

No matter what the government does now, it is too late to significantly change the overall trend because of social attitudes, say demographers such as Gu Baochang, a professor of demography at Renmin University in Beijing. –WSJ

While some experts have argued that slower population growth could mitigate pressure on China to create new jobs as technology increases productivity, others think China is in deep trouble…

“They should have lifted all birth restrictions before 2010,” says Baochang. “Whatever steps they take now, China’s low-fertility trend is no longer reversible.” In three decades, 1/3 of China’s population is predicted to be over the age of 60.

To continue reading: “No Longer Reversible”: China’s Low Fertility Rate And Birth Restrictions Set Stage For Disaster

 

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Europe: Safeguard Values or Disappear, by Giulio Meotti

Posted on April 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

Europe’s indigenous population is committing slow suicide. From Giulio Meotti at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • We no longer replace our numbers; instead we rely on immigration to compensate for the shortfall in births. This immigration is for the most part Muslim; the effect of our demographic decline is, therefore, the Islamization of Europe.
  • The response of members of the political class, at least in Italy, is to shrug their shoulders, and say, “So what?” European elites believe that religion is private. However, most Muslims do not believe that religion is private, and some are working hard to create a state in which Islamic law is the legal foundation for everyone. The effect of this is already being felt across the European continent. We have more Islamic veils and mosques, and fewer cartoons of Mohammed.
  • Without the courage to insist on safeguarding our values, and passing our inheritance on to our children, we Europeans will simply disappear — as many groups have before. With us, however, will disappear the most enlightened civilization the world has ever known.

“We have to decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society continues to exist — or if it will be wiped out.” This observation was recently made by Attilio Fontana, a politician with the anti-immigrant Northern League, who is running to govern the Italy’s northern region of Lombardy. Fontana’s remarks sparked quite a political storm. He may not have chosen the most delicate words, but he was right in pointing out the potential suicide of Europe. Italy’s problem, in fact, is not the word “race”, but the empty cradles and the crowded boats which have brought in 500,000 African migrants in a relatively short time

In Milan, Italy’s financial district and second-biggest city, there are more dogs than newborns. The city has literally “lost” half its births in a mere ten years. From 2006 to 2016, the number of children born in Milan has declined from 17,000 a year to fewer than 10,000. By comparison, in 1880 Milan had a population of 350,000, and that year, 10,000 children were born. Today, Milan is inhabited by 1,362,000 people with fewer than 10,000 new births. So, relatively, 138 years ago Milan had proportionately four times as many children as today. That is how Europe’s indigenous population will die out.

To continue reading: Europe: Safeguard Values or Disappear

 

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The great exodus out of America’s blue cities, by Kristin Tate

Posted on April 26, 2018 | 3 comments

People are getting fed up with the high costs, taxes, crime, grime, and homelessness rampant in many of America’s cities, most of which have been run by Democrats for decades. From Kristin Tate at thehill.com:

Am I the only one in my spinning class at Equinox in Manhattan who’s fed up paying $200 every month for a gym with clean showers, $3,000 in rent every month for an apartment without cockroaches and $8 every morning for a cup of coffee? Am I the only one moving through the greater part of New York City boroughs and seeing an inexorable march of urban decay matched with the discomfort of crowding and inexplicable costs? I know I am not.

New York is the most expensive city in America. Its lower-cost neighborhoods are riddled with crime and homelessness. Its public schools, some of which are among the worst in the nation, look more like prisons than places of learning.

With between up to 50 percent of their paycheck going to a combination of federal, local and city taxes, not including other consumer taxes baked into every aspect of their consumer practices, residents don’t even have the comfort of knowing that their tax expenditures are going to the improvement of their lives in the city. New York infamously misuses the hard-earned tax revenues of its citizens in ways that scarcely benefit them.

Eventually, city and state taxes, fees, and regulations become so burdensome that people and corporations jump ship. More people are currently fleeing New York than any other metropolitan area in the nation. More than 1 million people have moved out of the New York City metro area since 2010 in search of greener pastures, which amounts to a negative net migration rate of 4.4 percent.

The recently passed tax bill, which repeals the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, will only speed up the exodus. Thanks to the bill’s passage, many New York taxpayers will save little or nothing despite a cut in the federal rate. The state’s highest earners — who have been footing an outsized share of the bill — will pay tens of thousands of dollars more in income taxes in 2018. In New York alone, loss of the SALT deduction will remove $72 billion a year in tax deductions and affect 3.4 million residents.

To continue reading: The great exodus out of America’s blue cities

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Winter Is Coming (Part Three), by Jim Quinn

Posted on April 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

Part Three of Jim Quinn’s series on the Fourth Turning, at theburningplatform.com:

“The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning 

Image result for swirling fog game of thrones

In Part One of this article I laid out the reasons for Gray Champions arising to meet challenges during crisis periods in history. In Part Two of this article I assessed the configuration of Gray Champions throughout the world and the potential impact on the course of this Fourth Turning.

The swirling fog of confusion enveloping the globe as the high lords of the universe play their game of thrones has even the most critical thinking individuals baffled by the course of events. The desperation and blatant lawlessness of the Deep State players in their endeavor to preserve their hegemony over the course of global affairs is palpable with every attack, false flag, accusation, and ratcheting up of their propaganda media machine.

Like Game of Thrones, the behind the scenes machinations, subterfuge, and deceptions taking place outside the purview of the common folk are designed to only benefit the rich and powerful players undertaking these traitorous actions. Open warfare will not happen until it is thought to be in the best interests of those manipulating the levers of society and the narrative produced by their perpetual propaganda media machine. But, in the end, it will be the innocent common people who will suffer the consequences, while the lords reap the riches, glory and power.

“Why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?” – Lord Varys – George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones

The common people have always been blind to the next turning until after it fully arrives. Even now, the average person has no idea we are in the midst of a crisis period which will change the course of history. The overwhelming majority of the 325 million Americans, and billions around the globe, go about their daily lives oblivious to the intrigues, conspiracies, and treachery playing out at the highest levels of government and in smoky backrooms, where deals are made, wars plotted, and billions dispersed to the oligarchical lords running our world.

To continue reading: Winter Is Coming (Part Three)

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“Worse Than You Think” – 8 Reality-Checks From Last Week’s CBO Report, by David Nevins

Posted on April 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

CBO reports on the government’s finances make for grim reading, but probably not grim enough. From David Nevins at ffwiley.com:

For what they’re worth and for anyone who doesn’t mind digging through the weeds, here are my comments on last week’s budget outlook from the Congressional Budget Office, which I previewed here.

  1. In the baseline scenario that’s widely reported in the media (I’ll abbreviate it BS for this post), the CBO shows federal debt held by the public soaring from 76% of GDP at fiscal year-end in 2017 to 96% of GDP at the end of the ten-year forecast horizon in 2028.
  2. The CBO also restored its alternative scenario (AS), which adjusts for certain constraints on what it’s legally allowed to include in the BS, making it more realistic than the BS. Unfortunately, the AS didn’t appear in annual reports between 2014 and 2017—in those years, the CBO highlighted areas where its BS projections were likely to be wrong but without producing an alternative. Even though it gets only a fraction of the attention given the BS, it’s good to see the AS back. It shows debt held by the public rising to 105% of GDP by the end of 2028, compared to the baseline’s 96% of GDP.
  3. But the AS is also optimistic, partly because it uses the same rosy economic assumptions as the BS and partly because it includes less “emergency” spending than the BS.
  4. As for the economic assumptions, the CBO’s unemployment rate projections are lower than they were last year in every projection year. They show an average unemployment rate for the next ten years of 4.4%, which is almost a third lower than the 6.2% historical average over the past forty years (see the chart below) and at least 0.4% lower than in any other ten-year projection the CBO has ever produced.
  5. For perspective, consider that the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows only one historical ten-year period during which the average unemployment rate was as low as the CBO projects today. That one period was from 1948 to 1957, when the unemployment rate averaged 4.4% as in the CBO’s current projection, but it’s hard to imagine the average would have been that low had the Korean War not pushed unemployment firmly below 4% for 35 consecutive months.

To continue reading:  “Worse Than You Think” – 8 Reality-Checks From Last Week’s CBO Report

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Winter is Coming (Part Two), Jim Quinn

Posted on April 17, 2018 | 2 comments

Part Two of Jim Quinn’s series on the arrival of the Fourth Turning. From Quinn at theburningplatform.com:

“Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning the way you might today distance yourself from news, national politics, or even taxes you don’t feel like paying. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted. The Fourth Turning necessitates the death and rebirth of the social order. It is the ultimate rite of passage for an entire people, requiring a luminal state of sheer chaos whose nature and duration no one can predict in advance.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

In Part One of this article I laid out the reasons for Gray Champions arising to meet challenges during crisis periods in history. We are ten years into this Crisis and I have been pondering where we go from here. The plot line of the Game of Thrones has opened my eyes to the fact there isn’t just one Gray Champion during a Fourth Turning. During the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were Transcendental prophet generation representatives of the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln and William Tecumseh Sherman were Gray Champions of the Union.

These were men who would do anything to further their cause, from ordering thousands of men to their deaths on Cemetery Ridge, to burning down cities, to suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus, and seceding from the Union. They were destined to brandish their terrible swift swords in achieving total indisputable victory. But, we know only one side could win.

During the World War II/Great Depression crisis FDR is known as the Gray Champion who took drastic measures on the economic front with his New Deal and sent 16 million young men into battle on a scale never seen in history. Douglass MacArthur commanded many of those men in battles to the death across the Pacific. What is less discussed is the fact Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin were also members of the Missionary prophet generation and were the Gray Champions of their nations.

To continue reading: Winter is Coming (Part Two)

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Posted in Collapse, Cronyism, Debt, demographics, Economy, Financial markets, Government, History

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America 2.0, by Dr. D

Posted on April 12, 2018 | 1 comment

Optimism, even attenuated optimism, is in short supply. Here with a dose is Dr. D at theautomaticearth.com:

Dr. D: Herbert Stein’s Law states “What Can’t Go On Forever, Doesn’t.” This is a neat summary of the present trade and currency imbalance. China makes real goods and the U.S. consumes them by typing digits on a keyboard. This is the very definition of what cannot go on forever.

• How long do you expect a nation can make nothing and consume everything?

• How long do you expect a nation without manufacturing, without a workforce, and now without a viable military to remain pre-eminent?

• How long does wealth and influence remain in a nation that makes nothing, does nothing, and knows nothing?

Reminds me of that other Law: “A fool and his money should be parted as soon as possible”, for to be wealthy, and helpless, and dumb, is not a combination that lasts for very long.

Since China cannot send the U.S. free goods forever, ergo, they won’t. That means slowly or quickly, now or later, they will cut us off. Right now it appears that can never happen, but I assure you it will very soon. And what will the U.S. do then? Actually, that’s very simple: the U.S. will have to close a $600B trade deficit instantly. Roughly, that means the U.S. will no longer import $600B worth of goods and be $600B/year poorer, or $2,000/year per person. Nor is this unusual. History is rife with examples of nations that once were prosperous and were suddenly cut off: Spain and Greece come immediately to mind. So how does this happen?

The Core nation, the trading hub has failed dozens of times in history, from Venice to Holland, Spain to England, and although most of history was on a gold standard, nevertheless the same thing happened: repudiation and devaluation of the currency. That’s why a U.K. Pound is no longer a troy pound of pure silver ($192) and why the U.S. Dollar is no longer 1/20th ounce of gold ($267). So let’s run down how this might unfold.

Like other empires, the U.S. rose to prominence with hard work and industry. Like other empires, this personal and physical industry was the foundation of an effective military. This military eventually stood alone, leaving the U.S. to set the rules of trade, the rules of diplomacy, and the rules of conduct. Like other nations, the U.S. bent those rules in its own favor, both early and late. Like other nations, the natural way to take advantage was to run an overvalued currency, which draws in capital from all trading partners worldwide, creating a 100-year spiral of wealth and influence that seems truly endless.

To continue reading: America 2.0

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Debt, demographics, Economics, Governments, Trade

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Europe’s Civilizational Exhaustion, by Giulio Meotti

Posted on April 12, 2018 | 1 comment

Europe and its culture are dying and may already be doomed. From Giulio Meotti at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Islam is filling the cultural vacuum of a society with no children and which believes — wrongly — it has no enemies.
  • In Sweden, by 2050, almost one in three people will be Muslim.
  • The European mainstream mindset now seems to believe that “evil” comes only from our own sins: racism, sexism, elitism, xenophobia, homophobia, the guilt of the heterosexual white Western male — and never from non-European cultures. Europe now postulates an infinite idealization of the “other”, above all the migrant.
  • A tiredness seems to be why these countries do not take meaningful measures to defeat jihadism, such as closing Salafist mosques or expelling radical imams.
  • Muslim extremists understand this advantage: so long as they avoid another enormous massacre like 9/11, they will be able to continue taking away human lives and undermining the West without awakening it from its inertia.

In a prophetic conference held in Vienna on May 7, 1935, the philosopher Edmund Husserl said, “The greatest danger to Europe is tiredness”. Eighty years later, the same fatigue and passivity still dominate Western European societies.

It is the sort of exhaustion that we see in Europeans’ falling birth rates, the mushrooming public debt, chaos in the streets, and Europe’s refusal to invest resources in its security and military might. Last month, in a Paris suburb, the Basilica of Saint Denis, where France’s Christian kings are buried, was occupied by 80 migrants and pro-illegal-immigration activists. The police had to intervene to free the site.

Pictured: French police eject some of the 80 migrants and pro-illegal-immigration activists who occupied the Basilica of Saint Denis, on March 18, 2018. (Image source: Video screenshot, YouTube/Kenyan News & Politics)

Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University in London, recently published a report, “Europe’s Young Adults and Religion”:

“Christianity as a default, as a norm, is gone, and probably gone for good – or at least for the next 100 years,” Bullivant said.

According to Bullivant, many young Europeans “will have been baptised and then never darken the door of a church again. Cultural religious identities just aren’t being passed on from parents to children. It just washes straight off them… “And we know the Muslim birthrate is higher than the general population, and they have much higher [religious] retention rates.”

To continue reading: Europe’s Civilizational Exhaustion

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American Adults Have Never Been Fatter, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

America’s obesity epidemic has to be some sort of marker of the nation’s character. All kinds of excuses can be made, but many Americans suffer from a complete lack of self-control. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

40% of American adults are obese, a sharp increase from a decade earlier and a record high. according to federal health officials.

A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) sampling of 27,449 adults with a BMI between 30 and 40 found that among those aged 20 years and older, obesity went from 33.7% in 2007-2008 to 39.6% in 2015-2016. Severe obesity – those with a BMI above 40, jumped from 5.7% to 7.7% over the same period.

The increase in obesity among the 16,875 youth sampled was much lower, going from 16.8% a decade ago to 18.5% in 2015-2016. Still pretty bad.

For reference, this kid was considered fat in 1985… 

National trends

The CDC has prepared handy list of statistics as well as maps of average obesity by state, as well as by race. In a nutshell, the south is a hotbed of obesity.

Of note:

  • Obesity decreased by level of education. Adults without a high school degree or equivalent  had the highest self-reported obesity 
  • Young adults were half as likely to have obesity as middle-aged adults.

Obesity Prevalence in 2016 Varies Across States and Territories

  • All states had more than 20% of adults with obesity.
  • 35% or more adults had obesity in 5 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia).
  • The South had the highest prevalence of obesity (32.0%), followed by the Midwest (31.4%), the Northeast (26.9%), and the West (26.0%).

To continue reading: American Adults Have Never Been Fatter

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