Bill Gates Applauds Thailand’s Demographic Suicide
With smashing timing, Bill and Melinda Gates released a missive in the Wall Street Journal about the three
myths on the world’s poor coinciding with a
report announcing that the top richest 85 people (a list they are solidly
on) in the world have more money than the poorest 3.5 billion or 50% of the
entire world’s population.
This is an insane wealth
gap. These people and their bajillions are essentially running the world.
In the third myth of their response, the Gates’ commend Thailand as a great
example of family planning because Thai women went from having an average of six
children per woman just a few decades ago to having an average of 1.6 children
today.
There’s just one problem. Replacement rate —
that is the number of children needed to maintain a stable population — is 2.1
(but it’s even higher for countries with higher mortality rates). That means
that Thailand is below replacement rate, a reality that is screwing up the
country’s social and economic foundations.
It’s so bad in Thailand, actually, that articles
have detailed the “aging crisis” the country now faces due to the low birth
rate. In fact, all the Asian nations are now facing this issue, and most of the
developed world is below replacement rate as well.
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