The Week in Review
My apologies: My Week in Review this week grew into its own short essay. I'll be running it at Substack and here tomorrow. For this week, just a few very small things. (Blog Post)
Freya India is moving back to Britain, even though it has destroyed itself through a twisted form of self-loathing:
England has its problems: Over the past few decades, immigration has spiraled out of control, despite the public consistently voting against it; people have been arrested by armed police for offensive social media posts; civil servants are “triggered” by the sight of our own flag. We are losing pride in our country. Our economy is stagnant too: Measured by GDP per person, Britain is now only just richer than Mississippi, the poorest state in America. Wage growth is slowing, taxes are rising, and public services are collapsing. We are, according to The Atlantic, a “case study in self-sabotage.”
Why's she moving back? No, she's not afraid of ending up like Milo. She's going back because it's home. It's a highly Wendell Berry-ish piece.
The World is Imploding
Possibly the best Econtalk episode of the year: The Great Fertility Collapse. Columbia's birthrate is worse than Japan's and Western Europe is just flat-out screwed, even without the riots.
To keep a population stable, each woman needs to have 2.1 children. Why 2.1? Because we need as many women in the next generation as we have in this generation, unless the Dr. Moreaus of the world are able to figure out how to strap uteruses onto persons of penis. Birth rates for boys slightly exceeds 50%, hence 2.1.
But ain't no one hitting it anymore, except a few Muslim countries and the kids in my family line. Not a single developed country is even close to 2, much less 2.1.
[I]n Spain, it's around 1.2; in Italy, it's around 1.2; in the United Kingdom, it's around 1.4; in France, it's a little bit higher, around 1.7, 1.6; most Scandinavian countries, between 1.5, 1.7; Germany, around 1.3. So, yeah, basically, you don't have any one above 1.8, so not even close.
So what? Well, for starters, we have babyboomers who are insisting already that governments should increase their public benefits. I've heard that 89% of boomers in America want their grandchildren to pay more in Social Security taxes so the boomers can stick it to the rest of America just one more time before they cross over. I think we owe it to ourselves to build speedboats to navigate the River Styx so we can get this done asap.
Nellie Bowles Was Pretty Lame This Week
But she had this zinger line about Trump's new press secretary:
Katie, our new Karoline, looks like a sorority president greeting her pledges.
Capitalism Doesn't Cause Wars
Clandestine operations to establish banana republics and steal other countries' resources, yeah maybe. But not wars, as evidenced by the impressive number of capitalists, starting with Andrew Carnegie, who have opposed America's wars in the past, says Thaddeus Russell.
Besides, the idea that capitalism causes wars was promoted by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. That alone should be enough to discredit the notion.
Speaking of The Thad: His new book is getting released now. My copy is scheduled to arrive Tuesday. Looks like I won't be going to work on Wednesday.