"And Gulliver Returns" Book 1 Reversing Overpopulation--The Planet's Doomsday Threat
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“Let’s move to another area where I know you’ll get skeptics. It stands to reason that people will say that your licensing parents ideas are genocidal what do you have to say to that, Wreck?”
“I would say that it is just the opposite because the objective would be to have more humane people, more happy and socially constructive people in the world. And reducing population is definitely the way to save the human race not to destroy it.
”There’s no question about some people saying that licensing parents or even reducing the world population is genocidal. This may be particularly true when it relates to Southern Africans where their higher fertility rates are keeping them impoverished and often starving. But fertility rates are often high in Latin America and in many Mid-
Eastern countries. Relative to sub-Saharan Africa, I would guess that there would be
charges of genocide by many people of African descent in most countries. In Latin America I will probably be challenged by the Catholic Church and in the Mideast I will be called anti-Islamic, except for Israel where I will be called anti-Semitic.
“Interesting that you bring up genocide because it seems to be a constant of our human history. The world wars were genocidal for Europeans and Americans. It was primarily Christians killing Christians. Africa has had more than its share of genocidal wars and racial cleansing actions. Remember when Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, early in his presidency, used his private army, trained in North Korea, to kill and maim members of the PF-ZAPU. At least 3,000 were killed before they gave up and
joined him. Pol Pot was killing his countrymen. Mao was doing the same thing in China.
They each killed millions of their Asian countrymen.
“It may just be a localized power struggle in a nation or in a neighborhood. Whether it is Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda or black and Hispanic gangs practicing genocide against their
own ethnic neighbors in Los Angeles—it is certainly genocide. In Rwanda 70% of Tutsis were killed, and a total of over a half million died in their conflicts. In the U.S. about 12,000 gang related deaths occur annually. Too many people are living by the sword instead by the mind.
“Another factor that is also genocidal is the preventable deaths of millions of young children. Fifteen years ago, in 2010, 4.8 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa died before the age of 5 every year – that was 9 deaths every minute. With 20% of the world’s births, Sub- Saharan Africa accounted for 45% of childhood deaths. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the number of child deaths is rising. So if we can save these babies for living healthy and constructive lives, can you call it genocide?
“The question is—since white, black, brown and yellow people are being continually killed in wars, gang disagreements, revolutions, capital punishments, and ineffective health care—what do we call genocide? If saving humanity is a worthwhile objective and fewer of every ethnic group should be born, is this geno-killing or geno-preserving?
"It's not about race in an ethnic sense, is about race in the human sense—the human race. Many human actions may be considered genocidal. The American Civil War had Caucasians killing Caucasians. The Chinese civil war under Mao was Chinese killing Chinese. In Rwanda it was blacks killing blacks. Most gang fights are among ethnically similar groups. Did you know that black men are six times more likely to be homicide victims as white men, and they are mainly killed by other blacks.(39)
“The burden of overpopulation is heaviest on those of African descent, particularly those living in Africa. If changes are to be made in reducing poverty, it is obvious that those who are poorest will be negatively affected at first, then they will reap the values of their reduced population and more effective family lives and educations.”
“It is one thing for a black leader to suggest reducing black populations, or for a Muslim leader to suggest reducing Muslim populations, it is quite another thing if a non- black or non-Muslim suggests the same thing.
“But there’s another kind of killing that you are intimating. Maybe we should call it ‘pension-icide’ because your ideas are going to kill people’s pensions, or at least severely wound them. How are you going to confront the people who want to retire early with high pensions?
CONFRONTING SKEPTICS ON RAISING RETIREMENT
AGES
“Look at all the trouble they had in Greece when the government wanted to raise retirement ages. People took to the streets as if they were the Spartans of old, throwing rocks and burning buildings. You could understand that people take it hard when the great giver has to tighten the purse strings and search for more coins to fill the empty purse.”
“As for having more babies to provide for the pensions of the older people, we
suggested long ago that people should provide for their own pensions through adequate contributions during their working lives and by having longer working lives. But the way modern democracies function, especially as the welfare state expands, people want much more than they have put into their governments. Politicians, in order to get elected, promised more than they could possibly deliver.
“We saw this begin to be addressed 15 years ago when Greece nearly went bankrupt and increased its retirement ages a bit. Greece’s upward adjustment of retirement ages was nowhere near enough. While some people in Greece could retire as early as 50, their average age was closer to 62. Other European countries had retirement ages in the mid-60s and were increasing their retirement ages even faster than the Greeks. France planned to raise its retirement age from 60 to 62 eight years later. Germany was raising its from 65 to 67. Even the US raised its retirement age for people born after 1962 to age 67.
“Most of the Western world was swimming in debts. The US owed as much as its gross national product. Greece owed 140% of its GDP and Italy 135% of its GDP. A huge portion of the national debt has been used to finance pensions and healthcare. You
can understand the problem with pensions, when people pay 7or 8% of their income for their 45 years of work, then retire for 15 or 20 years after age 60 or 65. They have contributed about 3 ½ years of salary, with their early years of contributions being quite low, but then retiring for a number of years with a salary based on their highest years of
earning. Even if they retire at 70% of the highest years’ salaries within about seven years they would have exhausted their contributions and interest on those contributions. So the state is required to contribute from its general fund 70% of the top salary of the retirees for 8 to 10 more years. So for the average person the nation has promised to pay seven to ten years of the citizen’s full salary out of its general fund. But since the government has many other expenses it must borrow to pay what it has promised to its citizens.”
“Wait. You lost me on that! Let me see if I can figure out what to mean. If when I was 20 I started working at a job that paid me $20,000 a year. I began contributing to the state 8% of that. So I contributed $1600 that first-year. Then I retire at age 65 with a salary of $100,000 a year. So for that last year I contributed $8000. Now let’s assume that there was a gradual increase in pay over the 40 years. So in my 22nd year my pay would have been $60,000. My retirement contribution would have been $4800 per year. So let’s assume that that was my average contribution for the 45 years. So my total contributions over my work life would have been about $216,000. Now I retire at age 65 at 70% of my
top pay. So my annual income as a retiree would be $70,000. If I live only three more
years I will have taken out all of my contributions. But let’s assume that they earned
interest at 4%. I would have made another 23 or $24,000 on interest. So that means that I
would have contributed enough to pay my pension for a total of about three years and
four months. If I live as long as the average retiree the government will have to borrow
at least $700,000 to pay for my last 10 years of life.
“So if I were to pay my full retirement from my salary contributions, I wou
ld really have to pay about 25% of my monthly salary. Whew! I don’t think there are many people who want to pay 25% of their gross income every month. But I guess that’s what it would cost if I were to pay my fair share.”
“You get the point, Lee. But it is actually worse than that because people keep living longer every decade. For the last 165 years there has been a straight line graph indicating our increasing lifespans. And, if you have followed the Social Security Administration's life expectancy projections, as I have, you will see that they consistently underestimate the actual life expectancies of Americans. This then makes it look like there is more money in the trust fund than there actually is. So a few years ago the administration said they would not have problems until 2080. But each year that estimate has been reduced as the realities of payouts forced reevaluations. Ten years ago, in 2015, they started to predict more realistically. They predicted that outgo would be greater than income this year, in 2025, and in eight more years the trust fund would be used up. Switzerland has already used up its pension funds. In fact all of us in countries where social welfare has been voted in have troubles—except for Norway.
"Our democratic systems in the West give the voters what they want—early retirements and high pensions. High taxes in Europe make it more possible to handle it— but they still need to raise retirement ages, and they are not doing it fast enough. In our
country our selfishness and lack of economic knowledge creates a much greater problem.
“Let's look at medical costs. Of course, Lee, you would want to pay your way medically. In the US the average yearly medical cost is between $5,000 and $7000. If you were in a socialized medicine country the costs would be about half of what it is in US. So if you wanted to pay your way it would take about 10% of your income. So between your retirement and medical expenses are talking about 35% of your pay going into taxes. We won’t even mention here the other costs of running the government, like: defense, education, roads, and all the government services. You can see why the Scandinavian countries have tax rates in the high 40%s. Even so they still have national debts at 40 to 60% of their gross domestic products. The US debt to GDP ratio is about 95%, and partially this is because American citizens pay total income taxes in the 10 to 20% range.
“When the realities hit, as it did in Greece in 2010, and will eventually in our country, you can expect that those who were taking more than they were giving will rise in revolt.
AGING POPULATIONS
“One area that the population skeptics often bring up is that the developed world’s people are aging. If people are going to be retired it will need young people to pay their retirement benefits. They keep using today’s more common retirement ages of 60 to 65 as if they were set in stone. They talk about the world’s over 65 population
tripling in 25 years, by 2050. By that time one in six people in the world will be over 65.
As we talked about earlier, retirement ages must be adjusted upward as our life
expectancies increase. It’s rather obvious that people are healthier now at age 65 than
they were 100 years ago when the average person was dead by that age. And we would
certainly expect that a 65-year-old who is expected to live to be 85 would be relatively healthy compared to the 65-year-old of the 1930s. Remember that when the Security Act was passed in America in 1935 the life expectancy was 61.7. So the average person was expected to die three years before collecting his pension. Today people are expected to
live 10 to 15 or more years past the time that they retire, if they retire at 67.
“They often point to China where there was a ratio of 16 elderly people per hundred workers in 2010, in 2025 it has doubled to 32, and it will double again by 2050. The problem in our country has been evident for years with Social Security and Medicare
having bankrupted their funds. And in 25 years, by 2050, one in six Americans will be
over 65. In Europe it will be two of six.
“And you’ve probably heard of people predicting that our lifespans can be
extended almost without limit as we develop artificial hearts, artificial lungs and pancreases, artificial blood cells, artificial joints, et cetera. Heck, we already have a lot of those things.
DO YOU REALLY THINK YOUR PLAN CAN HAPPEN?