Go Forth and Multiply

As you well know, the population of Europe is getting older and we are all choosing to have fewer children. Of course this having happened as the result of free choice on the part of individual families, Nanny Super State is not happy.

If demographic growth follows its current trend until 2030, the EU will lose 20.8 million people of working age (6.8 percent) due to greater life expectancy and lower birth rates.

Well maybe unhappy was the wrong adjective. Those with more knowledge of how to run our lives than we ourselves have, mean to solve this problem.

"This development will affect almost every aspect of our lives, for example the way businesses operate and work is being organised, our urban planning, the design of flats, public transport, voting behaviour and the infrastructure of shopping possibilities in our society."

What an enormous opportunity for more directives and regulations in other words. This is a bureaucrat’s dream. After all as they see it:

Why are there so few births in Europe It seems to be due to late access to employment, job instability, expensive housing and a lack of incentives (family benefits, parental leave, childcare, equal pay, etc.)

Compared to say Sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East where family benefits are so generous that the average woman has 5-10 children each. Why is it that the central planners of Brussels fail to notice that the doomsday numbers they give us are actually less than the total number of unemployed currently in Europe. If this lead to a dramatic fall in unemployment then it would be an opportunity rather than a threat. The hard to swallow fact is that women have more children when they live in countries where their only option is motherhood. Given more choice women have fewer babies. Unless the EU plans to force all women back to the kitchen, the best they can do is to suggest that pension ages of 55 are not sustainable and that using precious workers in the unproductive state sector is a waste of assets. Unfortunately, this kind of common sense will never prevail as it reduces the opportunities for central planning rather than increasing them. My solution to the problem is a decree to all of you: Go Forth and Multiply.