Quote:
Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
I accidently hit a link to the CFRA web site. CFRA is the ultra-right-wing "news" station here in Ottawa. But they had an interesting poll question today.
The question was, given Canada's aging population (see http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories ) what should be done to keep the country running? There will likely be too few skilled workers to keep the country running and there won't be enough money to cover health care and old age pension. The options on the poll were:
(1) Encourage families to have more children
(2) Increase immigration
(3) Increase taxes to cover the increased costs
(4) Other
About 80% picked option 1. Which I think is horrible. I don't like Quebec subsidizing large families with extra money to those with more children. We've discussed in other threads the problems with ever expanding population problems in India and China (despite the one child law). I don't think MORE people is the right answer to any of our problems. Now I realize that the other choices given forced the typical conservative on CFRAs site into a corner.. there was no way they would want MORE immigrants or MORE taxes. But there was an OTHER option, or they could have skipped voting at all. |
If you don't have more people, you're going to have less people.
Japan's population starting rolling over to the negative a year or so ago.
China's population is going to do the same thing, believe it or not.
Europe is going to see a significant population contraction.
Russia is seeing a population contraction right now.
Immigration is the answer to simply MAINTAIN the current population level and, hopefully, weed the bubble out of the system and balance things across all age groups.
Aggressive immigration would increase the population.
There are vast areas of the world with the opposite problem . . . . . a gigantic percentage of their populations under 30.
Cowperson