Awareness of falling fertility and demographic collapse is growing, even among the chattering class. What is the cause? Economics is certainly a factor, but the root cause is humanity's crisis of confidence stemming from secularism, "a way of life and thinking that rejects religion."
Anti-capitalism is all the rage these days. During the Cold War the Capitalism vs. Communism paradigm defined a bipolar world order. What we once called the "free West" touted capitalism as the holy grail for a better life.
Communists, aka leftists, woksters, PC types, etc. despise capitalism, though they have no problem living well from it. Doesn't matter. Their philosophical godfather, 19th century family-forsaker Karl Marx, called capitalism evil. Case closed.
America's economy is a globalist capitalist/socialist hybrid. Looming problems will metastasize after the November elections. Leftists will blame it on capitalism.
The International Monetary Fund says:
Capitalism is often thought of as an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society. The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit.
The IMF is wrong saying that private actors function "in a way that can serve the best interests of society." Maybe once upon a time. In today's dog-eat-dog zeitgeist, these actors - technically "private" though heavily subsidized public companies - outsource good jobs and promote cheap labour immigration. This is harmful to society, though it benefits shareholders, especially corporate brass. The consequences of laying off millions and importing millions are on the taxpayer's tab. Capitalism?
The better question: How does capitalism affect fertility and family life? What is the demographic impact?
Some months ago Philip Pilkington, an Irish macro-economist, posted a brilliant exposition on just that in American Affairs Journal: "Capitalism's Overlooked Contradiction: Wealth and Demographic Decline."
Left to its own devices, capitalism's categorical imperative of work and consumption is, in the end, at odds with its structural needs, as it discourages family formation and thus stymies the capitalist economy's ability to grow. This is the core contradiction of capitalism - much more profound than anything Marx imagined.
[T]he grim truth [is] that the relationship between capitalism and population is in fact a self-destructive one.
Yes, that's today's predatory capitalism where the deck is stacked against the American family and the middle class. It certainly "discourages family formation."
When making ends meet is tough, folks cannot afford as many children as they desire, thus will be fewer future workers. That drives up labour costs, leading to inflation. Soon enough you have an ageing society where "the number of mouths to feed outstrips the number of cooks in the kitchen."
In such a society, intergenerational conflict seems all but inevitable. Younger people will see their real wages stagnate in the face of inflation, while asset markets will be dominated by the elderly, who will have accumulated more savings. The cause of the problem will be obvious to all, but there will be no equitable solution that benefits both sides of the generation gap. In societies faced with such zero-sum games, social bonds fray and strife becomesinevitable - in this case, we should expect intergenerational conflict as children turn on their parents.
That is absolutely apocalyptic. Further:
Capitalism may help lift people out of poverty initially, perhaps even allow them to have more children, but this trend is short-lived... Simply put, unless a country has an unusually large, fertile traditionalist religious community, it is highly unlikely that its demographics will remain intact once it achieves a per capita income of $36,000.
Globalists have a (short term) solution: immigration. In 1990, immigrants were 6.2 percent of America's population. By 2020, official (questionable) estimates were 13.7 percent. That's 44 million folks. But immigration is not staving off an ageing society. In 1990, America's average age was 32.9 years. By 2020 it was 38.6. When immigrants move from poor to rich countries, their fertility declines. Capitalism?
In order for wealthy countries to attract enough immigrants to counteract their demographic decline, poor countries must remain poor so that they can serve as breeding grounds for the developed economies' labour forces. In an echo of historic systems of colonial resource extraction, it is almost as if poorer countries are not being allowed to develop so that they can continue to export human capital to the developed world - what commentators from these poorer countries mean when they talk about "brain drain."
Pilkington calls this cheap labour immigration "biological imperialism." In the throes of Enlightenment hubris we're not supposed to mention biology. Insinuating that Mother Nature prevails flies in the face of egalitarian Economic Man ideology.
Another observation:
Unless the negative relationship between the accumulation of wealth and the decline in fertility rates is somehow broken, capitalism will ultimately undermine itself. It is only a question of when.
Trashing capitalism per se draws no fire from the chattering class. But capitalism, when governed by morality and consideration of the public good, has tremendously benefitted people throughout the world. We've had capitalism without running up government debt to unsustainable levels. We've had capitalism where Henry Ford started a pro-family corporate initiative that brought a living wage to auto workers and kick-started the American middle class. We've had capitalism where the dominant reserve currency was not weaponized by warmongers. We've had capitalism when family, country, hearth and home were prized and not valued solely for their economic utility. We've had capitalism when Christian values permeated society.
My purpose here is not to defend capitalism, of which there are many varieties. Today the US is in the vice grip of post industrial finance capitalism, where more wealth is generated from investments, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, stocks, bonds, and derivatives, etc. than from production.
Production? That's the basis of industrial capitalism. But the US has been deindustrialized - by globalist finance capitalism. The manufacturing sector has been gutted by outsourcing while wages have stagnated from cheap labour immigration. Economist Michael Hudson:
Today, the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector has regained control of government, creating neo-rentier economies. The aim of this post-industrial finance capitalism is the opposite of industrial capitalism as known to nineteenth-century economists: it seeks wealth primarily through the extraction of economic rent, not industrial capital formation... Labor is increasingly exploited by bank debt, student debt, and credit card debt while housing and other prices are inflated on credit, leaving less income to spend on goods and services as economies suffer debt deflation.
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and their ilk were pro-family industrial capitalists with a social conscience. Aside from PC claptrap about "climate change," post-industrial finance capitalism, aka globalism, cares naught about people, families, cultures or countries. It is a nefarious melding of state and corporate interests that is the enemy of family, folk and faith wherever it goes. This managerial "New Industrial State" (per John Kenneth Galbraith) steamrolls the will of the people regardless of election results or the public good.
There is, however, a silver lining:
[T]he largest religious groups in the American population - Protestant, Catholic, "Nones," andAtheist/Agnostic - have a combined fertility slightly below replacement rate. On the other hand, "believing" religious groups who adhere to traditional ways of living have birth rates far above replacement, including traditionalist Catholics (3.6), Orthodox Jews (3.3), Mormons (2.8), and Muslims (2.8), not to mention voluntarily isolating sects like the Amish [6.7]. This suggests that the current tendency for American culture to secularize will not last forever; at a certain point, groups with a more robust capacity to reproduce will replace groups with less robust capacities in a simple Darwinian manner. Currently, these groups represent a very small fraction of the American population, but because human reproduction follows a multiplicative path these groups could grow rapidly in numbers, especially as the other groups decline.
Pilkington nails it there. This will ultimately steer society in a pronatalist direction, regardless of the economic system. Never forget that change happens. There are trends and there are sub-trends. The transition to a pro-family ethos is already underway.