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Far-Right Eugenics Advocates Warn Of 'Population Collapse'

Far-Right Eugenics Advocates Warn Of 'Population Collapse'

A conference warning that "by the end of the century, nearly every country on earth will have a shrinking population, and economic systems dependent on reliable growth will collapse" is set to be held at an Austin, Texas hotel in December and led by far-right eugenicists, The Guardian reports.

The Guardiannotes:

Broadly, eugenics is a group of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of a human population. It became the basis of a popular movement from the late 19th century, and led to governments around the world adopting policies such as forced sterilization of disabled and mentally ill people. The field was discredited after the second world war due to its association with racial policies in Nazi Germany, and many critics have attacked it as a pseudoscience.

According to the report, Natal conference organizer Kevin Dolan "has a long history as an activist and influencer on the far right," although the conference's website claims the event "has no political or ideological goal other than a world in which our children can have grandchildren."

During a June interview with "the Jolly Heretic podcast, hosted by Edward Dutton, an Englishman who left an academic position in Finland after his university found that a work he co-authored with the self-described 'scientific racist," Dolan suggested "that the pro-natalist and the eugenic positions are very much not in opposition, they're very much aligned."

Additionally, the report notes when asked "why outsiders should be interested in Mormonism, Dolan said, "I think we actually are going to win. I think we're going to inherit the earth."

The Guardian reports the longtime right-wing influencer "pseudonymously promoted conservative Mormon and alt-right talking points" online until "his identity was revealed by antifascist activists and subsequently corroborated by Guardian reporting" in 2021.

Furthermore, he has promoted the conference, which will be held at The Line Hotel, "on the far-right podcast circuit, and has explicitly linked the conference's 'pro-natalist' orientation to eugenics," The Guardian notes.

Some event speakers include "Malcolm and Simone Collins, who have attracted significant coverage on both sides of the Atlantic for their warnings about slowing birthrates in advanced economies and how this will lead to 'catastrophic population collapse,'" as well as "Charles Haywood, the former shampoo magnate who the Guardian revealed as the founder and sponsor of a far-right network of fraternal lodges, the Society for American Civic Renewal, and who has speculated about his own future as a 'warlord' in 'more-or-less open warfare with the federal government' in a post-collapse America."

Global Project on Hate and Extremism co-founder Heidi Beirich told the news outlet, "It's not surprising to see far-right folks, eugenicist types and white nationalists joining forces at a conference like this. They have become bedfellows. The far right has long fretted about a demographic winter, and though they don't necessarily say it openly, what they are referring to most often is a fall in white birthrates."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

America’s Declining Population Is No Reason To Worry

America’s Declining Population Is No Reason To Worry

Total births in the United States fell last year to about 3.79 million, the smallest number in 32 years. The fertility rate hit a record low of 59 childbirths per 1,000 women. Americans are not having enough children to replace themselves.

This supposedly is bad news. Headlines are crying about a “Shortage of Americans” and “Demographic Decline.”

I don’t know. There seem to be plenty of Americans to go around. If population growth were the mark of national greatness, Oman, Equatorial Guinea, and Angola would be the stars.

Of course, a sharply falling population would be cause for concern, but that’s not the situation here. The United States has been below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman for decades. The total continues to grow because of immigration.

Fewer workers, we are told, can be problematic for an aging society. An expanding elderly population needs more taxpayers to support its health care and, in many cases, more caregivers to make meals. This is true, but these demographics were totally predictable. It’s odd to see handwringing over the need for more tax revenues shortly after our leadership pushed through deep tax cuts that will drain the Treasury of said revenues.

As for who will fill caregiving jobs, the answer may be those whose previous work was taken over by robots. And if caregiving pays too low to attract workers, the answer is to pay more.

Meanwhile, there are nuggets of very good news embedded in the U.S. population numbers.The birthrate among teens and unmarried women has plummeted. More women are having children when they’re older and, presumably, better able to support them. Also interesting, women with college degrees are having more children.

And thank you, Affordable Care Act, for making birth control, especially the long-acting kind, more available to women. That, not abortion, is behind the drop in unwanted pregnancies. Abortions are now at their lowest number and rate since around 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Roe v. Wade.

Some causes of falling births were expected. The birthrate among Hispanic women — once high relative to the rest of the population — is now more in line with that of other groups.

Fewer Americans would be a welcome relief for those living in our highly congested urban corridors. One can argue that America’s big, open spaces provide room galore for a far bigger population, but somehow natives and the foreign-born alike choose to shoehorn into densely populated areas.

Sadly, the habit of associating a dipping headcount with decline still plagues city leaders unable to deal with the numbers they already have. New York Mayor Bill De Blasio was so upset by the census report showing that his city’s population shrunk by 40,000 — a mere drop in a sea of 8.4 million souls — that he questioned its methodology. At rush hour, some of the subway trains get so overcrowded the doors won’t close because passengers can’t get their hands and legs inside. And we can light a candle for the drivers consigned to the flames of perpetual gridlock.

Some take falling birthrates as a sign of lost confidence in the future. But those fretting about the millennials’ lack of enthusiasm for reproducing might investigate deeper. They might start addressing the onerous burden of student debt. Babies are expensive.

They might look into today’s crazy work schedules and, for those without college degrees or specialized skills, low pay. There was a time when parents could come home at 5:30 in the afternoon.

What makes for a strong society is healthy people, prosperous people, and happy people — not more people. Americans can put low birthrates at the bottom of their worry list.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: A packed New York City subway car.

Is The U.S. Full? That’s The Wrong Question

Is The U.S. Full? That’s The Wrong Question

“Our country is full,” President Trump said in regard to the immigration debate. Is this true? That depends. Some parts seem full, and some parts are definitely not. What the United States does need is a smart conversation on population.

Nearly every point made in this “America, full or not?” discussion bears at least one questionable assumption. Here goes:

— Low population density means we have lots of room to grow. That’s a meaningless measure, ignoring the way we live. Population density may be 301 people per square mile in France and only 93 per square mile in the U.S. However, a far larger proportion of our landmass is barely habitable desert and frozen tundra.

— Cities cannot be full: they can just keep building higher and higher. Many living in cities frozen with congestion would disagree. (Odd how Americans are increasingly leaving those wide-open spaces and crowding into cities.)You have densely packed South Florida. As building cranes hover over nearly every horizon, the region is facing an existential threat from climate change. Scientists predict water levels could rise by 2 feet in the next 40 years. That would imperil water supplies and more than $14 billion in real estate. Vast areas where Floridians now live would be underwater. Meanwhile, South Florida expects to add 3 million more people by 2025.

The subways and streets of New York City are already insanely congested, yet demographers predict nearly half a million more New Yorkers by 2040. San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles are also coping with rapid growth that many residents see impairing their quality of life.

All these cities see home prices going through the roof because so many are moving there. Rather than admit that their population is reaching a breaking point, some argue that leveling old neighborhoods for forests of residential towers will solve the housing “shortage.” But then, the place loses its character, the very thing that attracted people in the first place. And the struggle to move folks from their home to work gets harder. After all, the miles of road and track are pretty much a fixed number.

— A falling U.S. population would be a big problem. How so? Certainly, a collapsing birthrate speaks of lost hope in the future, but that’s not us. But then you hear worries centered on softening real estate values as demand diminishes. Lower prices may be bad for sellers and builders, but they’re great for buyers — especially those squeezed out of the market by high prices.

Rust Belt cities that have seen sharp losses of population may now have more to offer. Their urban infrastructure is already built and largely paid for. And their well-built housing is going for cheap. That is a competitive advantage.

— A shrinking workforce is bad. How so? Not if robots are coming for jobs. Fewer workers would be needed. They can be trained for work the robots can’t do and paid a lot more.

Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon warned Congress that if the U.S. population were to continue growing at its current rate, the nation’s “capacity to educate youth, to provide privacy and living space, to maintain the processes of open, democratic government … may be grievously strained.”

The U.S. population then was only 200 million. Today it’s nearly 330 million.

Nixon advocated a national population policy. A good population policy would consider how many immigrants we need, given our low birthrate, and what sort of skills they should have.

In the meantime, note this: For all the hollering about national head count, the U.S. population is still growing, though slowly. Let’s turn the alarm bells off and talk calmly.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Photo of New York City skyline during Hurricane Sandy blackout, by David Shankbone via Flickr

Study: US Middle-Class Families Are No Longer In The Majority

Study: US Middle-Class Families Are No Longer In The Majority

By Don Lee, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The nation’s middle class, long a pillar of the U.S. economy and foundation of the American dream, has shrunk to the point where it no longer constitutes the majority of the adult population, according to a new major study.

The Pew Research Center report released Wednesday put in sharp relief the nation’s increasing income divide, which is certain to be a central issue in the 2016 presidential race. It also highlights how various economic and demographic forces have eroded long-held ideals about maintaining a strong, majority middle class.

Many analysts and policymakers regard the shift as worrisome for economic and social stability. Middle-income households have been the bedrock of consumer spending, and many liberals in particular view the declining middle as part of a troubling trend of skewed income gains among the nation’s richest families.

Median-income voters, particularly non-college-educated men, are also at the core of billionaire Donald Trump’s surprising surge in the Republican presidential campaign. His supporters’ sense that their once-secure middle-class standing is in danger of slipping appears to be fueling much of the anger against the government and immigrant groups.

The tipping point for the middle class occurred over the past couple of years of the recovery from the Great Recession as the economy continued to reward highly educated workers, well-to-do investors and those with technical skills.

Rapid growth of upper-income households, coupled with an increase in less-educated, low earners, has driven the decline of the middle-income population to a hair below 50 percent of the total this year, Pew found. In 1971, the middle class accounted for 61 percent of the population, and it has been declining steadily since.

The Pew research found that the shares of upper-income and lower-income households grew in recent years as the middle shrank — with the higher-income tier growing more. In that sense, the nonpartisan group said, “the shift represents economic progress.”

Pew defined middle class as households earning between two-thirds and twice the overall median income, after adjusting for household size. A family of three, for example, would be considered middle income if its total annual income ranged from about $42,000 to $126,000. Pew analyzed data from the Census Bureau and the Labor Department, as well as the Federal Reserve.

Most Americans have traditionally identified themselves as middle class, even those at the top and bottom, reflecting a kind of cultural heritage tied to the American dream of self-reliance. But the Great Recession and subsequent slow recovery have shaken that image.

A Gallup survey this spring showed that just 51 percent of U.S. adults considered themselves middle or upper middle class, with 48 percent saying they are part of the lower or working class. As recently as 2008, 63 percent of those polled by Gallup said they were middle class.

This change in self-identification — and the reality of the shift documented by Pew — carries political ramifications as the state of the middle class continues to be a major focus of the economic debate in the presidential campaigns, with candidates, in time-honored fashion, invoking the middle class in their speeches and policy statements. President Barack Obama has dubbed his programs “middle-class economics.”

Although the median incomes of upper, lower and middle tiers have all lost ground since 2000, primarily because of the Great Recession in late 2007 to mid-2009, upper-income households saw the smallest decline through 2014, the Pew study found.

Seen over a longer period, from 1971 to 2014, the median income of all upper-income households increased 47 percent to $174,625. The median income for the middle tier rose 34 percent to $73,392, and for the lower income group, it was up 28 percent to $24,074. The median marks the halfway point.

Pew’s findings add to strong evidence that the middle class has been thinned partly by a decline in manufacturing due to competition from imports as well as a broader polarization of jobs that has favored the most educated and technically skilled workers.

The Pew study did not address economic mobility — an issue that many economists believe is more important than the change in income distribution. But research on income mobility across generations has found the U.S. as a whole lags other Western countries.

The declining middle also reflects demographic shifts, such as the arrival of more low-skilled immigrants, which can be seen in the overall slippage of Latinos in the income ladder since 1971. By race, black adults made the biggest strides in income status from 1971 to 2015, although they are significantly less likely to be middle income compared with adults overall.

At the same time, the increase of women in the workforce since the early 1970s has tended to boost household incomes, as has higher college education enrollment. And of course, strong gains from stocks and high-tech ventures have fueled incomes for some.

As of this year, 9 percent of Americans are in what Pew called the highest-income category — up from 4 percent in 1971 and 5 percent in 1991. A household with three people had to have an income of more than $188,000 last year to be in this highest bracket.

In contrast, the share of American adults in the very lowest income category — a three-person household making less than $31,000 — rose to 20 percent of the U.S. adult population this year, from 16 percent in 1971.

“The distribution of adults by income is thinning in the middle and bulking up at the edges,” Pew said.

(Times staff writer Samantha Masunaga in Los Angeles contributed to this story.)

©2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump takes the stage at a campaign rally in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire December 1, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder