Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Evidently Friedman is not the only Jew with a bizarre fondness for anti-Semitic tropes. 
What do people think of these?
- Thread starter Mouthwash
- Start date
- Status
Evidently Friedman is not the only Jew with a bizarre fondness for anti-Semitic tropes.
Jews lived for 2,000 years in foreign countries. People thought that they were "rootless cosmopolitans," as you put it. Now they have a state. So thinking of them as something other than the quintessential Diaspora Jews, a concept which has been totally depoliticized since the decline of racialism, is now antisemitic too?
I've made it clear that I think the same thing applies to every ethnic group or nationality. Antisemitism seems to me a unique phenomenon, not merely a general suspicion of Jews.
Mouthwash said:
Who cares about geographic size? The point I was making is that Japan's probable acquisitions have a population that's about the same size and probably larger than it does. Germany on the other hand has a population twice the size of Poland, which implies that Germany ought to be able to swallow Poland; if conversely Japan can swallow parts of China.
The QC also made the same point I did.
You can't accuse me of being lazy by citing a point you made that came hours after I'd made the post. I can't time-travel. Now, if you'd made the point right off the bat that would have been a fair characterization.Mouthwash said:
Mouthwash said:
You also asked what I thought about the author. I provided a response. If it helps, I think his essays are also trite garbage and that Plotinus is being too polite.
Mouthwash said:
I don't think any of those groups are potential traitors. Sure, some individuals might one day betray their country. But I don't assume that what holds true for some individuals holds true for everyone.
You've, ah, agreed with my read of his views twice dude. It's sorta hard, at this point, to backtrack out of it.Mouthwash said:
What sort of nerve? A nerve where I use humour to illustrate a point? Namely, that it isn't worth seriously engaging with fringe-dwelling racists?Mouthwash said:
Still doesn't follow. First, as I've said, Germany would be fighting against all of Eastern Europe. Super-Poland has a huge alliance extending from the Balkans to the Baltic as well as an economic union which Friedman compares to the Soviet Union. And, as he specifically goes out of his way to explain, warfare will no longer depend upon the sheer size of a military-industrial complex:
Computer scientists are much more valuable than soldiers in the "Friedmanverse."
Masada said:
You said that it was ridiculous to suggest that Japan would become powerful rather than Germany because the two countries had similar TFRs. I accused you of not reading the book, because Friedman makes it very clear that Japan will expand to take advantage of the Chinese labor available next door, without a centralized government to resist the intrusion. You have not given any meaningful response to the fact that you seem to lack basic knowledge about the content of the book.
I assume you skimmed through it in a bookstore or something. The fact that you seem to think that Friedman's predictions for Poland are inconsistent because of Germany's higher population is only more evidence. At this point I've stopped caring.
No, you said that one of this theories was racist and/or offensive. Which isn't even as a good as a simple "charlatan, makes money off of stupid businessmen."
I don't think that every single individual member of a foreign ethnic group has the potential to be a traitor; I think that, under the proper circumstances, they should simply be regarded as such. The US-Japan war in WWII wasn't an ethnic conflict, Japanese were just locked up because racist hysteria drove the policy of the day. Similarly, Jonathan Pollard is a fairly extreme case of a Jew putting Israel's interests over their home country and acting on it. It's not as if we were conquering our own independent state in New Jersey and there was a civic alienation of Jews in the United States.
I'd like you to quote me on that. Both times.
Another claim that Friedman makes is that Mexico will be able to compete with the United States and/or become a regional power. I didn't think that was feasible, although I did before I crunched the numbers think that Mexico might become relatively more powerful viz. a viz. the US than it was now. Turns out that while I was right, I wasn't right quite as much as I'd thought. Mexico, it seems, using moderately realistic assumptions isn't going to close the gap all that much.
First off, I decided I'd look at population, using the UN's revised 2012 World Population Prospects. The results were interesting. Basically, the Mexico's population is projected to increase to 2055 (up 33.1% compared with 2010) before declining to 2100 (with a peak to trough decline of 10.9%. The US on the other hand is projected to experience population growth from 2010 to 2100. This means that the difference between the population of the US and Mexico (currently 2.6 times) will increase over time (3.3 times in 2100). This all suggests that Mexico's is very unlikely to see convergence with the US arising out of population growth.
Second, I looked at GDP per capita. I'm using World Bank figures which are expressed in 2005 constant $USD. For reference, US GDP per capita in 2012 (the last real figure I used)* was $45 335 while the same figure for Mexico was $8545. For the purposes of my analysis, I simply extrapolated the average of the last 10 years growth in GDP per capita out to 2050**. The 10 year average for Mexico was 1.4% with the US having a figure of 1.0%. Using this I got a final figure for Mexico of $14 362 and $65 106 for the US. This implies that the difference between US and Mexico GDP per capita will close from 5.3 times to 4.5 times. Unfortunately, as the raw numbers suggest this doesn't actually imply a huge 'closing of the gap' between the two.
I then tried agian. This time I purged Mexico's lowest data point (2008-09 which returned a value of -5.9%). This boosted Mexico's 10 year average to 2.2 per cent. I decided to hold the US constant. This had the effect of boosting Mexico's GDP per capita to $19414 in 2050 and further reduced the differential between the two to 3.3 times. Unfortunately, this did not close the gap. I then used the highest data point in the Mexican data series (3.7%) and just assumed that Mexico would hit this number... again it boosted Mexican GDP per capita to a healthy $33987 and the differential to a mere 1.9 times but it still didn't fix the problem. To actually achieve convergence***, I needed annual growth in GDP per capita to average 5.5% for Mexico which is rather, well, high.
To derive actual GDP, I then times the GDP per capita for each five year interval (2015, 2020... 2050) by the UN's population projections for Mexico. This showed that under the straight 10 year average scenario that the US's economy would still be 11.6 times larger than Mexico. Under the most optimistic scenario of 5.5%... the US was still going to be 2.5 times larger with the scenario in which I purged the lowest data point coming in at 8.6 times and the scenario in which I chose the highest data point as the average coming in at 4.9 times.
Based on the above, I have to conclude that while Mexico might close the gap somewhat under realistic assumptions (the 10 year average and 10 year average minus the lowest data point) this is not likely to actually result in Mexico becoming that much more powerful relative to the US than it currently is.
* 2012 being the most recent data for which the World Bank has released final data.
** This likely overstates the growth of both countries, given that GDP growth per capita tends to fall overtime.
*** I did this by eye.
I agree, sorta.
The UN projections I used assume that there is no change in immigration policy settings. So Germany could using immigration reverse its projected population decline. It would also be better placed to do so than say Poland simply because Germany is much more attractive economically. There are obviously other factors that influence immigration, including receptiveness towards immigrants etc, but those are cumulatively weaker forces than the sorts of economic pull factors that somewhere like Germany can exert.
On the other hand, while it is possible to use immigration to arrest population decline, immigration doesn't really fix the underlying issue - i.e. low TFRs- but simply delays the onset of population arrest. In other words: to arrest population decline in the long-run, one must ensure that (1) TFRs are always above 2.1, (2) that the flows in are always larger than the flows out due to natural increase (births less deaths)* (3) or some combination of both where the flows out due to death are matched by flows in from births and immigration. The issue being that nobody who has turned the demographic transition corner has managed to do (1) over the long run and while (2) is practical for now it might not be practical into the future as lots of developing countries begin to go through their own demographic transition and as their economies continue to grow. In other words: supply might be adequate to meet demand. There's all sorts of complications, not least the fact that nobody is quite sure how this is going to all work because we're only just starting to move down that path.
* Really natural decrease in this case.
So wouldn't Japan also be fighting all of Balkanized China? It did, more or less, the last time it tried this and could never quite manage to finish what it started.
Well sure. Except I literally fail to see how Eastern Europe (inclusive of Poland) could compete with Germany even on those terms, particularly because Germany is already so much further ahead.
This only works because (1) he China away and picks one of his three possible China scenarios (the most improbable, I might add) and just runs with it and (2) asserts that Germany will suck because its no longer dynamic (what does that even mean?) and will have a declining population. This, as I said, doesn't make sense because what logically applies to Germany (population decline), ought also to apply to Japan; and what also applies to Japan (imperialism) as a response to that population decline, ought also to apply to Germany. I'd actually argue that Germany is better placed to exert influence over Eastern Europe into the future (something it already does) than Japan is to do the same to even a Balkanized China (something it can't really do now).
I've subsequently pointed out other examples. Personally, I thought what I pointed out was a sound example in a bite sized form of why people shouldn't take George Friedman all that seriously. I just left it up to (reasonable non-racist) people to draw that conclusion.
I'll come back to this latter.
First off, I decided I'd look at population, using the UN's revised 2012 World Population Prospects. The results were interesting. Basically, the Mexico's population is projected to increase to 2055 (up 33.1% compared with 2010) before declining to 2100 (with a peak to trough decline of 10.9%. The US on the other hand is projected to experience population growth from 2010 to 2100. This means that the difference between the population of the US and Mexico (currently 2.6 times) will increase over time (3.3 times in 2100). This all suggests that Mexico's is very unlikely to see convergence with the US arising out of population growth.
Second, I looked at GDP per capita. I'm using World Bank figures which are expressed in 2005 constant $USD. For reference, US GDP per capita in 2012 (the last real figure I used)* was $45 335 while the same figure for Mexico was $8545. For the purposes of my analysis, I simply extrapolated the average of the last 10 years growth in GDP per capita out to 2050**. The 10 year average for Mexico was 1.4% with the US having a figure of 1.0%. Using this I got a final figure for Mexico of $14 362 and $65 106 for the US. This implies that the difference between US and Mexico GDP per capita will close from 5.3 times to 4.5 times. Unfortunately, as the raw numbers suggest this doesn't actually imply a huge 'closing of the gap' between the two.
I then tried agian. This time I purged Mexico's lowest data point (2008-09 which returned a value of -5.9%). This boosted Mexico's 10 year average to 2.2 per cent. I decided to hold the US constant. This had the effect of boosting Mexico's GDP per capita to $19414 in 2050 and further reduced the differential between the two to 3.3 times. Unfortunately, this did not close the gap. I then used the highest data point in the Mexican data series (3.7%) and just assumed that Mexico would hit this number... again it boosted Mexican GDP per capita to a healthy $33987 and the differential to a mere 1.9 times but it still didn't fix the problem. To actually achieve convergence***, I needed annual growth in GDP per capita to average 5.5% for Mexico which is rather, well, high.
To derive actual GDP, I then times the GDP per capita for each five year interval (2015, 2020... 2050) by the UN's population projections for Mexico. This showed that under the straight 10 year average scenario that the US's economy would still be 11.6 times larger than Mexico. Under the most optimistic scenario of 5.5%... the US was still going to be 2.5 times larger with the scenario in which I purged the lowest data point coming in at 8.6 times and the scenario in which I chose the highest data point as the average coming in at 4.9 times.
Based on the above, I have to conclude that while Mexico might close the gap somewhat under realistic assumptions (the 10 year average and 10 year average minus the lowest data point) this is not likely to actually result in Mexico becoming that much more powerful relative to the US than it currently is.
* 2012 being the most recent data for which the World Bank has released final data.
** This likely overstates the growth of both countries, given that GDP growth per capita tends to fall overtime.
*** I did this by eye.
The QC said:
I agree, sorta.
The UN projections I used assume that there is no change in immigration policy settings. So Germany could using immigration reverse its projected population decline. It would also be better placed to do so than say Poland simply because Germany is much more attractive economically. There are obviously other factors that influence immigration, including receptiveness towards immigrants etc, but those are cumulatively weaker forces than the sorts of economic pull factors that somewhere like Germany can exert.
On the other hand, while it is possible to use immigration to arrest population decline, immigration doesn't really fix the underlying issue - i.e. low TFRs- but simply delays the onset of population arrest. In other words: to arrest population decline in the long-run, one must ensure that (1) TFRs are always above 2.1, (2) that the flows in are always larger than the flows out due to natural increase (births less deaths)* (3) or some combination of both where the flows out due to death are matched by flows in from births and immigration. The issue being that nobody who has turned the demographic transition corner has managed to do (1) over the long run and while (2) is practical for now it might not be practical into the future as lots of developing countries begin to go through their own demographic transition and as their economies continue to grow. In other words: supply might be adequate to meet demand. There's all sorts of complications, not least the fact that nobody is quite sure how this is going to all work because we're only just starting to move down that path.
* Really natural decrease in this case.
Mouthwash said:
So wouldn't Japan also be fighting all of Balkanized China? It did, more or less, the last time it tried this and could never quite manage to finish what it started.
Mouthwash said:
Well sure. Except I literally fail to see how Eastern Europe (inclusive of Poland) could compete with Germany even on those terms, particularly because Germany is already so much further ahead.
Mouthwash said:
This only works because (1) he China away and picks one of his three possible China scenarios (the most improbable, I might add) and just runs with it and (2) asserts that Germany will suck because its no longer dynamic (what does that even mean?) and will have a declining population. This, as I said, doesn't make sense because what logically applies to Germany (population decline), ought also to apply to Japan; and what also applies to Japan (imperialism) as a response to that population decline, ought also to apply to Germany. I'd actually argue that Germany is better placed to exert influence over Eastern Europe into the future (something it already does) than Japan is to do the same to even a Balkanized China (something it can't really do now).
I have it in a digital copy.Mouthwash said:
Mouthwash said:
I've subsequently pointed out other examples. Personally, I thought what I pointed out was a sound example in a bite sized form of why people shouldn't take George Friedman all that seriously. I just left it up to (reasonable non-racist) people to draw that conclusion.
Mouthwash said:
I'll come back to this latter.
Done and done.Mouthwash said:
Mouthwash said:
You seem to think there's obvious racist overtones in what Freidman wrote. Overtones, I didn't even explicitly mention in my original post. I just pointed out that it was ridiculous something others have subsequently picked up with no trouble whatsoever. See: Wrymouth's witty comment about Friedman discovering the 1930s.Mouthwash said:
Fair enough. But as I said, I don't think that they are ideological allies in those areas, at least not necessarily. Note that Friedman doesn't provide any evidence for saying that both liberals and socialists are anti-nationalists (e.g. quoting any, or even naming any); rather, he infers that both must be on the basis of his analysis of why, in general, people are either nationalist or anti-nationalist. Since I think this analysis is basically crazy, it's little wonder that it yields a conclusion that seems at best dubious.
OK, I'm glad you can see that.
I don't think it is. Hanno described encountering a savage, hairy people whom he called "gorillae". When, in the nineteenth century, Europeans first encountered the remains a new kind of African ape, they called it the "gorilla" after Hanno's account. I don't know if that means that they thought Hanno had actually encountered the ape, or whether they thought the bones were of some weird kind of human being that he had encountered, or whether they simply liked the idea of re-using the name. In any case, Hanno never said anything about apes or likened the people he saw in Africa to them. You'll notice that in the earlier part of the narrative, Hanno states that the African coast is inhabited simply by "Ethiopians". That term was used in antiquity for anyone living south of Egypt. It indicates to me that Hanno, or at least the author of the Periplus, was perfectly familiar with African people and knew what they looked like.
Besides which, Hanno was not neolithic! He lived in the iron age.
Perhaps more fundamentally, though, this part of the argument was about whether certain attitudes are "natural". Now suppose we did know of some neolithic individual or society who regarded Africans as apes. Why would that show this attitude to be "natural"? Neolithic people's beliefs were no more "natural" than ours. Any given neolithic individual would have had beliefs and attitudes that were shaped by a culture that itself was the product of tens of thousands of years of development. Just because these cultures were much earlier and much more technologically primitive than our own doesn't make them any more "natural", and it doesn't make their members' beliefs any less culturally conditioned than our own.
I think that if you wanted to show that a certain belief or attitude was "natural", your best bet would be not to look to history but to show that it's present in small children from all societies, crossing cultural boundaries. But that is a notoriously hard thing to do.
True. But does that affect what we were talking about? This was all in the context of Friedman's belief that it's natural to care about "one's own", and his identification of "one's own" with one's nation. If you apply the same reasoning to gender politics then you don't simply get the idea that women shouldn't do certain jobs, you get the idea that women (or whichever sex you're talking about) aren't really "us" at all. Now is that a natural belief?
tl;dr: I'm going to take an entirely different issue, project current trends in a straight line, and if they don't jive with what Friedman is saying than he's an idiot and I've somehow made a meaningful contribution to the thread!
Not particularly, no. Friedman doesn't think that open warfare will break out between the two countries until WWIII. So it would probably just be a soft exploitation with some intercedent uses of hard power.
I don't really feel that appeals to intuition are worth arguing with.
I have no idea what you're smoking, but pass some of that stuff over here. Neither quote even implies that I agreed with you in any form. I don't think that there are racist overtones in his work; I just think that certain projectionists might jump to that conclusion. Because it's all they can think about when someone mentions a relationship between a foreign ethnic group and white people.
Well, I recall reading something about it which mentioned that they couldn't tell the difference between Africans and other apes they encountered. I honestly don't know; you're right.
Yeah, the point was that if even people in the early classical age couldn't identify other humans properly, than prehistoric humans certainly wouldn't.
It seems that ancestral humans weren't equipped to understand or empathize with other peoples. They were- and are- psychologically capable of genocide in our their tribe's interest. I think that people as radically different looking as Africans simply couldn't be understood as "human" by Europeans at that time, and vice versa, because we could barely recognize people outside of our extended family as such. I could be totally wrong, but it's just the impression I get.
Sometimes, but it depends on the context. So if I were talking about "guy stuff" then it wouldn't be natural to include a female in the conversation. Even in the modern world there are areas of interaction that are almost exclusively male and female. Friedman is just applying that principle to to nationalism. We do regard other nationals as "us" to an extent, but not in the area of geopolitics. Therefore, nationalism just seems to be a psychosocial outgrowth based around political structures of the modern world. In that sense, it is natural.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Masada said:
According to predictions by Wójtowicz & Wójtowicz (2009) Poland will reach average Western European (old 15 EU members) GDP per capita by 2044.
Let's also quote some figures from M. Piątkowski's 2013 study (in English) to illustrate what is going on here:
"(...) In 2012 Poland’s GDP was almost 20 percent higher than at the beginning of the crisis, a peerless performance among all EU 27 countries (Figure 4)."
"(...) Strong performance during the crisis helped Poland become the star performer among all transition economies. Its GDP per capita has doubled since 1989, performance partially matched by the Slovak Republic and Estonia only. Poland’s economic growth was also faster than in any other country on the continent, becoming Europe’s growth champion (Figure 5)."
In reality Poland's GDP growth between 1989 and 2012 (see above) has been achieved entirely in period 1992 - 2012.
This is because in 1989 - 1992 Polish GDP actually declined by 15%, and only since 1992 it started to grow, by 2012 reaching 200% of 1989 level.
In 1992 country's economy was tragic as illustrated by songs from that period (e.g. "Jeszcze Polska" by Kazik).
In 1989 Polish GDP per capita was 35% of old EU average (other estimates: 29% and 36%), while in 1992 Polish GDP per capita was no more than 28% of Western European average. In 2007 - already 50% of Western European average and in 2012 - 61%:
"(...) As a result of this impressive economic performance, Poland’s income per capita in 2012 reached 61 percent of that in Western Europe (euro zone-17), more than doubling from 28 percent in 1992. (...)"
And:
"(...) This implies that in just twenty years Poland has managed to offset almost 350 years of economic decline, an unprecedented achievement comparable to the economic success of only some Asian economies such as Japan, Korea and China. (...)"
Let's also add that GDP per capita is not the only indicator of living standards in Poland, as Piątkowski notices:
There is also fast progress when it comes to development of infrastructure in Poland.
For example since Euro 2012 we finally have a decent amount of kilometers of highways.
================================
Check also my home-made graph that I posted here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13175299&postcount=74
See it in the spoiler below:
Spoiler :
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
There is still also this problem of emigration from Poland.
Since the accession to the EU in 2004 many people have emigrated.
I haven't seen any studies regarding the detailed structure of this emigration.
Is this emigration of mostly high-skilled labour or mostly of low-skilled labour ???
I suppose (from my own daily life observations) that it is mostly emigration of low-skilled labour who couldn't find a good job in Poland.
Although in some cases for sure also educated people are emigrating, which can be much more harmful to the country and to its economy.
In any case it would be better for the country if people stop emigrating and I hope this will soon become reality.
===============================
Edit:
Birth rate in Poland recently (in the 21st century) has declined, IMO because so many young Poles have emigrated to other EU (mostly EU) countries. There is data which shows what is the TFR of Polish people who emigrated to old EU countries, and it is much higher than the TFR in Poland. I suppose the explanation for this is that young people are the majority of emigrants. If these people come back to Poland (after getting rich abroad - as many people do, since most of them emigrate for several years and then come back) and bring their children with them, then birth rate is going to increase again. Moreover, Polish birth rate has declined to Germany's level only very recently (around year 2000) - as your link shows. Germany experiences such a low TFR already since 1975.
As for France - in France Muslim and various Non-European immigrants are increasing the average birth rate.
In Germany Muslim and various Non-European immigrants are also increasing it. In Poland there are not many such immigrants so far.*
So far population of Poland remains stable (ca. 38,5 million people all the time since 1992) despite the decreasing TFR and emigration.
I'm not sure how to explain this - maybe there is enough of immigration and re-emigration to compensate for this decreasing TFR and emigration.
If the EU succeeds at getting Ukraine and Belarus joining the European Union, then there will be a massive wave of immigration from there to Poland.
Actually Poland should - in my opinion - agree to offer Polish Cards to people from Ukraine and from Belarus who are willing to live and work in Poland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karta_Polaka
By doing so we can encourage immigration from relatively culturally close countries and compensate for the decreasing TFR. If recent Ukrainian Crisis continues and Russia annexes Eastern Ukraine, then Western Ukraine - no matter if it joins the EU or not - will become more closely associated with Poland.
What I mean is that Poland should agree to offer Polish Cards even to such Ukrainians and Belarusians who don't have any Polish ancestry.
Because according to current state of legislation, only people who can prove that they have some Polish ancestors may apply for the Polish Card.
To get the Polish Card they also need to prove their language proficiency in Polish - which is often too hard even for people with Polish ancestry.
So in my opinion these hard requirements should be softened when it comes to people from several countries, including Belarus and Ukraine.
The opportunity to apply for Polish Cards should be given to people from Israel. Maybe some Polish Jews want to come back ??? Recently there is a "Jewish Renaissance" in Poland (especially in Warsaw, I think), and Anti-Semitism is no longer a significant factor within the Polish society. Poland is now among the very top few countries in Europe with the lowest number of cases of Anti-Semitic hostility - as statistics show. Statistics on % of people who believe in "Jewish conspiracy" theories are less favourable for Poland, but lack of violence is more relevant to assess whether Jews can feel safe in a particular country.
Much good has been done for the cause of Polish-Jewish reconciliation during the last years.
The opportunity to apply for Polish Cards should be also extended to cover people who live in the USA, in Canada and in Brasil.
There is a lot of Polish-Americans there, and maybe some would like to have Polish Cards, even if they don't want to come to Poland.
========================================
* There is a joke that roughly in the same time when Americans elected their first Black President, Poles greeted their first Black Person.
Of course this is an exaggeration because there is quite a sizable Black minority in Poland - but nowhere near as large as in Western Europe.
Since the accession to the EU in 2004 many people have emigrated.
I haven't seen any studies regarding the detailed structure of this emigration.
Is this emigration of mostly high-skilled labour or mostly of low-skilled labour ???
I suppose (from my own daily life observations) that it is mostly emigration of low-skilled labour who couldn't find a good job in Poland.
Although in some cases for sure also educated people are emigrating, which can be much more harmful to the country and to its economy.
In any case it would be better for the country if people stop emigrating and I hope this will soon become reality.
===============================
Edit:
Masada said:
Birth rate in Poland recently (in the 21st century) has declined, IMO because so many young Poles have emigrated to other EU (mostly EU) countries. There is data which shows what is the TFR of Polish people who emigrated to old EU countries, and it is much higher than the TFR in Poland. I suppose the explanation for this is that young people are the majority of emigrants. If these people come back to Poland (after getting rich abroad - as many people do, since most of them emigrate for several years and then come back) and bring their children with them, then birth rate is going to increase again. Moreover, Polish birth rate has declined to Germany's level only very recently (around year 2000) - as your link shows. Germany experiences such a low TFR already since 1975.
As for France - in France Muslim and various Non-European immigrants are increasing the average birth rate.
In Germany Muslim and various Non-European immigrants are also increasing it. In Poland there are not many such immigrants so far.*
So far population of Poland remains stable (ca. 38,5 million people all the time since 1992) despite the decreasing TFR and emigration.
I'm not sure how to explain this - maybe there is enough of immigration and re-emigration to compensate for this decreasing TFR and emigration.
If the EU succeeds at getting Ukraine and Belarus joining the European Union, then there will be a massive wave of immigration from there to Poland.
Actually Poland should - in my opinion - agree to offer Polish Cards to people from Ukraine and from Belarus who are willing to live and work in Poland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karta_Polaka
By doing so we can encourage immigration from relatively culturally close countries and compensate for the decreasing TFR. If recent Ukrainian Crisis continues and Russia annexes Eastern Ukraine, then Western Ukraine - no matter if it joins the EU or not - will become more closely associated with Poland.
What I mean is that Poland should agree to offer Polish Cards even to such Ukrainians and Belarusians who don't have any Polish ancestry.
Because according to current state of legislation, only people who can prove that they have some Polish ancestors may apply for the Polish Card.
To get the Polish Card they also need to prove their language proficiency in Polish - which is often too hard even for people with Polish ancestry.
So in my opinion these hard requirements should be softened when it comes to people from several countries, including Belarus and Ukraine.
The opportunity to apply for Polish Cards should be given to people from Israel. Maybe some Polish Jews want to come back ??? Recently there is a "Jewish Renaissance" in Poland (especially in Warsaw, I think), and Anti-Semitism is no longer a significant factor within the Polish society. Poland is now among the very top few countries in Europe with the lowest number of cases of Anti-Semitic hostility - as statistics show. Statistics on % of people who believe in "Jewish conspiracy" theories are less favourable for Poland, but lack of violence is more relevant to assess whether Jews can feel safe in a particular country.
Much good has been done for the cause of Polish-Jewish reconciliation during the last years.
The opportunity to apply for Polish Cards should be also extended to cover people who live in the USA, in Canada and in Brasil.
There is a lot of Polish-Americans there, and maybe some would like to have Polish Cards, even if they don't want to come to Poland.
========================================
* There is a joke that roughly in the same time when Americans elected their first Black President, Poles greeted their first Black Person.
Of course this is an exaggeration because there is quite a sizable Black minority in Poland - but nowhere near as large as in Western Europe.
If I had tried to make a forecast rather than a projection the outcome would have been worse. As it was I took one of the worst growth periods in the US history and actively manipulated Mexico's results to try and achieve convergence. It literally took the most ridiculous of assumptions - 4.0% GDP per capita growth! - to even get it to sort of work. A level of GDP per capita growth, I might add, that Mexico hasn't managed to reach since 1997 and that only after its economy crashed in 1995 (i.e. from a very low base). So far as I can tell, Mexico has never managed to sustain GDP per capita growth rates over 4% except for a brief period in the 70s and even those relative gains were wiped out by a five year slump. But by all means, if you can offer a plausible scenario in which Mexico's relative strength improves viz. a viz. the United States, please do.Mouthwash said:
Mouthwash said:
So how does that address Japan's demographic issues, again; anymore than say Japanese factories operating in China do now?
You have to be able to defend your assumptions when making forecasts like this. Otherwise, what's the use of them?Mouthwash said:
Mouthwash said:
Yes, they do. They don't imply that you agree with what I've said but they certainly confirm that you agree that reading is consistent with what Friedman is saying. In other words, you agree that Friedman is saying that Mexican-Americans are potential traitors. But refuse to accept think this is problematic which is your issue not mine.
We're not talking about GDP per capita. But rather a nebulous set of variables that Friedman expects will replace the military-industrial complex. Variables that Germany owing to its position at the highest parts of the global value add chain has a decisive edge over just about everyone. It's not a comment on Poland so much as a comment on Germany and how it should perform better than most in Friedmanverse's new paradigm.
I'll get around to the birth rate stuff in due time because it isn't quite correct.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Germany is considered the leader of the EU and it doesn't seem like it is going to change soon. But Poland's voice in the EU also started to matter, it is gradually joining the "big ones" of the EU. I have an impression that Poland already matters more in the EU than Spain, a country of comparable population.
Germany works as EU leading country but it seems to be more a responsibility than a privilege.
That data from Piątkowski posted above is optimistic for Poland's future prospects but look at many other EU countries - here the colors are not so bright. I was shocked when I noticed that Croatia has practically no GDP growth since 1989. It is a country with many attractions for tourists - tourism alone should produce a lot of income.
So what has happened?
And then we have this crisis also in many of old EU members - in Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc.
This is not a good time for the EU as a whole, and since Germany is considered the leader, then also most blame Germany for failures experienced by the EU as a whole and by various EU countries.
In many if not most cases these accusations are probably not justified, but I'm not going to try to judge this here.
Also in the USA there is a lot of criticism of Germany's economic policies towards other EU states.
Germany works as EU leading country but it seems to be more a responsibility than a privilege.
That data from Piątkowski posted above is optimistic for Poland's future prospects but look at many other EU countries - here the colors are not so bright. I was shocked when I noticed that Croatia has practically no GDP growth since 1989. It is a country with many attractions for tourists - tourism alone should produce a lot of income.
So what has happened?
And then we have this crisis also in many of old EU members - in Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc.
This is not a good time for the EU as a whole, and since Germany is considered the leader, then also most blame Germany for failures experienced by the EU as a whole and by various EU countries.
In many if not most cases these accusations are probably not justified, but I'm not going to try to judge this here.
Also in the USA there is a lot of criticism of Germany's economic policies towards other EU states.
Friedman believes that Japan will be able to sustain itself with a minimal population by recourse to advanced robotic technology, particularly in the area of providing for its aging population. Why other advanced economies can't achieve a similar level of automation is never adequately explained, though I seem to recall him placing particular emphasis on Japanese culture's fixation on robots.
He frequently makes the claim that history repeats itself. He crafts an imaginary scenario where Japan starts WW3 by launching a sneak attack on American orbital facilities from a hidden base on the dark side of the moon.
He frequently makes the claim that history repeats itself. He crafts an imaginary scenario where Japan starts WW3 by launching a sneak attack on American orbital facilities from a hidden base on the dark side of the moon.
I doubt that that can be the major reason, given that the birth rate has also declined in Britain, and this is where all those young Poles have emigrated to.
You're correct Plot. TFRs are calculated based on the average number of births that a women could expect over her lifetime using current age specific total fertility rates and who survived till her fertile period was. Out-migration doesn't influence that all that much. In actual fact, high levels of out-migration might boost domestic TFRs because the better educated (who have less babies) tend to be more mobile.Plotinus said:
Domen said:
Nope. Births to French Muslims/non-European immigrants while higher than those of French non-Muslims/non-European immigrants do not in of themselves explain the relatively sound level of France's TFR. Interestingly, after adjusting for income and education (the best predictors of fertility) Muslim TFRs aren't all that much higher than those of non-Muslim French born people.
There's about a 20 year lag between a TFR falling below 2.1 and population decline. Immigration of course can compensate for that.Domen said:
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
As for France, maybe it is high time for this country to finally have a higher TFR:
An extract from Wiki: "Starting around 1800, the historical evolution of the population in France has been extremely atypical in the Western World. Unlike the rest of Europe, there was no strong population growth in France in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. The birth rate in France diminished much earlier than in the rest of Europe. Thus population growth was quite slow in the 19th century, and the nadir was reached in the first half of the 20th century when France, surrounded by the rapidly growing populations of Germany and the United Kingdom, had virtually zero growth."
http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/392161demographie.png
Population change between 1820 and 1914, from a study by Angus Maddison:
http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm
Numbers in thousands:
France:
1820 - 31,250
1914 - 41,476
+32,72%
Germany:
1820 - 24,905
1914 - 66,096
+165,39%
UK:
1820 - 21,230
1914 - 46,049
+116,91%
I think this guy claimed that it was due to a different family structure in France:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Todd
France (or area of France) was the most populous country in Europe all the way since 855 to 1855.
Well, maybe in some periods the HRE was more populous, but then it was not a single country. Maybe also Russia exceeded the population of France by 1800 (after the partitions of Poland) or by 1815.
An extract from Wiki: "Starting around 1800, the historical evolution of the population in France has been extremely atypical in the Western World. Unlike the rest of Europe, there was no strong population growth in France in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. The birth rate in France diminished much earlier than in the rest of Europe. Thus population growth was quite slow in the 19th century, and the nadir was reached in the first half of the 20th century when France, surrounded by the rapidly growing populations of Germany and the United Kingdom, had virtually zero growth."
http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/392161demographie.png
Spoiler :
Population change between 1820 and 1914, from a study by Angus Maddison:
http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm
Numbers in thousands:
France:
1820 - 31,250
1914 - 41,476
+32,72%
Germany:
1820 - 24,905
1914 - 66,096
+165,39%
UK:
1820 - 21,230
1914 - 46,049
+116,91%
I think this guy claimed that it was due to a different family structure in France:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Todd
France (or area of France) was the most populous country in Europe all the way since 855 to 1855.
Well, maybe in some periods the HRE was more populous, but then it was not a single country. Maybe also Russia exceeded the population of France by 1800 (after the partitions of Poland) or by 1815.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Surely not all, for example my cousin has emigrated to Hannover and this isn't in Britain (even though it used to be ruled by the same dynasty in the past). There is also large Polonia in the Netherlands. Not to mention countries outside of the EU like the US or Canada but emigration there started much earlier.
TFR in the UK has declined and is low, but TFR of Polish women in the UK is 2.13 - check here:
http://www.openpop.org/?p=761
BTW - Russia has been experiencing low TFR for 25 - 30 years now (Poland only for 14 - 20 years).
But recently an increase of TFR in Russia can be observed and maybe they will reach 2.1 soon.
The conclusion of the article suggests that the Census derived TFRs for Poles might be higher due to timing issues. Basically, Polish women who are looking to migrate in their early twenties have children after arriving in the UK. This tends to compress their fertility into a fairly short window which owing to the relative scarcity of Polish in the young and old age groups might skew the derived TFR. This as the article suggests means that its too early to tell whether Polish women in the UK will have higher completed fertility than women in Poland.
I doubt it.
Domen said:
I doubt it.
Why? I don't particularly care, and if you're actually interested in why Friedman thinks so you can read his thoughts on Mexico.
Because the level of exploitation will rise? Meaning Japan will start actively interfering with Chinese politics?
It's not my responsibility. You made the claims, you back them up:
No, Mexican-Americans aren't going to universally feel a call to rise up and and take over the American Southwest. The only claim Friedman makes is that Mexican nationalism will have a resurgence and that Mexicans in the Southwest will eventually be divided from Americans along ethnic lines. There is literally nothing there to suggest that Friedman is even commenting on the qualities of Mexicans as individuals, other than this:
I don't expect that you'll actually respond to this in any real sense. It's becoming clearer to me, after three pages of your trollfest, that I'm debating a liar.
Moderator Action: Infracted for trolling. Don't call other people trolls or liars.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
I don't think that you haven't read the Next 100 Years, I think you assumed I didn't and and felt free to strawman it. First it was to get attention in your usual way, then through smoke-and-mirror tactics to divert attention from the fact that you haven't mustered up a argument against him that that couldn't be refuted by quoting a few paragraphs from the book.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Dear Christ, but you're an arrogant child. Masada is actually engaging with you on this, to an extent which most people simply wouldn't bother, returning to the source material and walking you through the numbers, and the best you can do is call him a "liar"?
People here have been a lot more patient with you than I think you realise, and you're doing precious little to earn it.
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