🚀 go-pugleaf

Ralph Mills (Ralph_Mills@calstate.edu) wrote:
: jcooley@world.std.com (John Cooley) wrote:
: >I just saw on one of those news shows on night TV an interview by Jane Pauly
: >of Ann Landers.  Two of the stats that surprised me was that Ann Landers
: >said when she asked her readers if they could do it all over again:
: >         - Only 55% said they would have married their current spouse.
: >         - 70% said they wouldn't have had kids if they could do it again.
: >(Ann Landers said she got 50,000 responses on these questions.)

: There is much said on ROM about winners and losers. The losers in 
: the race to the future are not those who die with the most toys, but
: those who leave the greatest number of progeny behind.  They will
: inherit the civilization some childless folk insist they are fighting
: to preserve.

     Something like this is subtext under some of the social stresses
     in California that it's not PC, or something, to discuss. The
     present population that is presently dominant in voting and paying 
     taxes is balking at paying for their evolutionary replacements. 
     Specifically, the schools are a disaster area. The result may be a 
     population that will have too high a proportion of unskilled labor
     to produce enough to sustain the aforementioned taxpayers in their 
     old age. Of course, that what goes around comes around isn't really
     news...

		On the other hand, with the global population explosion,
: even the winners may well be the losers.

     The population of the US will double in my lifetime and will probably
     double again in the lifetime of a child born here today. It is
     possible that the US will become a net importer of food, although 
     that study sounded rather speculative. With a population that favors
     suburban sprawl over cities, though, it seems possible. But, again,
     it's not discussed much because the population increase is almost
     entirely in the part of the population and it's descendents that 
     immigrated to the US recently. It's always fun to watch "PC's" 
     trying to deal with conflicting imperatives :-) . They often react
     like a robot tripping some of its circuit breakers and going
     around and around and around in circles beeping at everything...

     Hugh ---