Economic and Cultural Decline
“The
combined effect of reliable contraception and legalized abortion has
probably contributed most to the decline in fertility in the “developed
nations.” The socialist states have created a demand for these means of
“fertility abatement” by crafting societies where the denigration of
marriage, family, religion, and private property had largely destroyed
not only the traditional motivations for rearing children but the means
for traditional families to afford them.
Government
spending accounts for nearly half of GDP among the countries of the
European Union – almost 60 pence out of every euro when compared to
personal income, two-thirds of which goes for welfare expenditures.
Government confiscations on this scale largely eliminate the ability of
the middle class to save, undercutting their economic independence. But
what the money is spent on has an even more malignant effect.
It
is an axiom of economics that you get m ore of what you subsidize and
less of what you tax. The European welfare state leads to fewer
economically efficient marriages, the preferred basis of child-rearing,
and more unwed mothers, as well as more self-centered retirees,
disassociated from the extended family and childrearing. No-fault
divorce (particularly with children involved), the prevailing consensus
of post-modern feminism, and increasing tax-burdens work against any
attempts to restore the primacy of the natural family.
The
experience of the United States is instructive. BY 1993, the US
government was spending $20,000 per individual 65 or older, regardless
of his means, and $20,000 on every child in poverty (primarily the
progeny of unwed mothers). Between 1970 and 1993, the real after-tax
income in constant dollars of the median married family failed to grow
at all, despite a 38-percent increase in productivity per hour worked
and a 50-percent increase in hours worked by wives. The entire increase
in the US economy went to government and its beneficiaries.
Not
surprisingly, unwed motherhood soared, marriage and childrearing within
marriages declined, and divorces rose. The bumper stickers on the motor
homes of affluent retirees that read: “We’re spending our kids’
inheritance” should have continued “and spending our unborn
grandchildren’s share as well.”
The
United States currently makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s
population, yet she consumes one fifth of the world’s goods. How long
this can continue, if our production and reproductive values are
persistently undermined by welfarism, paid for by overseas borrowing
that has transformed the United States from the world’s largest creditor
to the largest debtor in just two decades?
The
socialist ideology has achieved its current hegemony because of the
gullibility of individuals who were told that government confiscation
and redistribution of income will achieve social justice. Given that
power, the massive growth of government became irresistible, and the
loss of income and of property rights was joined by a loss of rights for
the family and religion and the loss of our heritage as freemen, as the
growth of the power of nation-states led to unprecedented corruption.
Demographic implosions, disintegration of families, the demise of
religion, and the impending economic hegemony of Asia are the bitter
fruits of the European’s folly.
The
same can be said of us Americans. The footprints of Karl Marx are
stamped on every page of our recent history. The only antidote is the
severe curtailment of the excessive confiscations of government, thereby
returning to families the means and time necessary to care for
themselves and to enjoy the fruits of their labor and freedom, along
with the revitalization of a culture that encourages motherhood,
fatherhood, and lifelong families.”
(Europe’s Population Implosion, A Diagnosis, David A. Hartman, Chronicles, May 2004, excerpts pp. 25-25)
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