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Thursday, May 11, 2006
Russian women not reproducing; next stop, dustbin of history Remember the glory days of the old Soviet Union? They were the first into space with Sputnik and Khrushchev, in high Cold War fashion, said, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you,” referring to the West and capitalism. Turns out history wasn’t on their side after all. Contrary to Khrushchev’s bluster, his own country is now busily burying itself. In fact, if they don’t do something rather dramatic, their country is not just going to experience history, it’s going to be history, literally. The problem is demographic: Russian women aren’t having babies anymore, or at least not enough of them to replace the population. And why is that? Because babies are a lot of trouble and, in a basket case economy that fails to provide prosperity, they’re also too expensive. So Putin has a plan. He wants to double the amount of monthly child benefits women receive for their first baby and then double that amount for their second child. On top of the monthly benefits, women should be given a large lump sum of money following the birth of their second child. Sounds like a lot of wishful statist thinking and where the money is going to come from is anybody’s guess, but if they can scrape it together it might help solve the problem. They might also want to consider outlawing abortions since it is estimated that there are more abortions than births each year in Russia. Having legally available abortions in such a country is sort of like having an open bar at an A.A. meeting. Feminists will naturally get huffy over that suggestion and ask, what about a woman’s right to choose? The short answer is, if a woman’s right to choose in this particular country and demographic situation eventually leads to no more women, maybe it’s a right that ought to be suspended for the good of women, as well as everybody else. Or looking at it another way, if a woman’s right to choose is written in the legal books, but there’s no women left to read it, does that right still have any meaning? Putin also said that immigration policy is an important factor in improving Russia’s economic development, that Russia needs “to encourage an inflow of qualified migrants, educated and law-abiding people.” But why would people like that want to go to a dying, ramshackle country where women have to be bribed into perpetuating the species? It’s a vexing problem and an ironic one as well. Imagine the world’s largest country in terms of physical size ending up the most devoid of human population. Ronald Reagan once said that the evil empire of the Soviet Union would be consigned to the dustbin of history, but who thought it would happen this way? Greg Strange provides conservative commentary with plenty of acerbic wit on the people, politics, events and absurdities of our time. See more at his website: http://www.greg-strange.com/ Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by Greg Strange at 7:41 AM |
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