BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 12:01 PM

Also, the notion that a moratorium on immigration would solve the problem is putting the cart before the horse. The immigration problems we have now (problems with illegal immigration) are caused by our economic policies and practices. Make our economic policies and practices less destructive to the lives of people in developing countries, and we will see a drop in illegal immigration to this country.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 02:44 PM

I thought this thread was all about making our economic practices less destructive. The best way to start would be to place a 6 month moratiorium on immigration, and deal with the people who are here now.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 02:52 PM

That wouldn't stop the influx of illegal immigrants. That would only stop legal immigration, and the legal immigrants aren't the ones who are contributing to the problems that the above poster likes to complain about.

The only way to reduce the influx of illegal immigrants would be to stop destroying their ability to survive economically in their home countries.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 04:09 PM

Distribute birth control pills, you mean, in their home countries.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 04:30 PM

No, I mean stop flooding their markets with cheap, subsidized agricultural products, stop lending money to their puppet dictators for projects that don't benefit the majority of people and only put their countries deep in debt, stop forcing them to restructure their economies in ways that destroy their ability to function economically, and other forms of predatory capitalism.

The economic policies and practices of countries like the US are the main reason we have a problem of illegal immigration. Most people don't like having to leave their home countries in order to survive. But we make it so difficult for them to survive in their home countries, many of them don't have any other choice.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 10:54 PM

If you'd had an effecive family planning program in place 40 years ago, subsidized agriculture wouldn't have mattered.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 01:35 AM

If I'd had an effective family planning program? I don't know what that's supposed to mean. My own personal family planning program was very effective. I have one child (an adult now) who was very much planned.

They don't need our cheap subsidized imports. They are quit capable of growing their own food. The problem is that we are putting the farmers out of work by flooding their markets with cheap subsidized agricultural products that they are perfectly capable of growing themselves, and the farmers are not able to compete with those products. We are putting the farmers out of work. It has nothing to do with the size of their population. It is entirely about predatory capitalism.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 01:43 AM

Think of it this way... some people think that by flooding our labor market with cheap labor, illegal immigrants are putting Americans out of work, or preventing Americans from getting work.

Well, what they are doing to us here, we already did to them in their home countries and that's why they come here. If we would stop doing that, they wouldn't need to come here, and they would stay in their home countries. Anyone who wants to control illegal immigration needs to stop denying the reasons for the illegal immigration and start lobbying the government to take corrective action. Ending or at least modifying NAFTA would be a star. Conducting a drastic rethinking of IMF policies and practices would also be a good start.

In the absence of such corrective actions, there will never be an effective way to end illegal immigration.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 01:44 AM

Correction: Ending or at least modifying NAFTA would be a start.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 07:51 AM

Great, NAFTA is a disaster, I agree. But fewer people would solve most problems and it's a good place to start.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 08:11 AM

People tend to have more babies when their populations are under stress, as they are in the countries that the illegal immigrants are mostly coming from. In countries where populations are getting their basic needs met and are not under so much stress (and that have enough resources to educate the women), people have a lot fewer babies. The answer to reducing the birth rate is to help populations get their basic needs met, and to educate the women. Correcting the problems with our economic policy would go a long way toward reducing the birth rate in developing countries.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 08:55 AM

Actually, people tend to have more babies when they live in an environment where they beleive in witch doctors and the witch doctors tell them to have more babies--like the Pope, for instance, or the Ayatolla.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 09:47 AM

Wrong. The birth rate in Iran is lower than the birth rate in the US. Probably because the women there are, on the whole, more well educated than women in the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 09:50 AM

Italy has a lower birthrate than the US, also.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 11:09 AM

Yes, there are witch doctors in Italy, but nobody believes them, that's the key issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 11:32 AM

There are several Catholic countries that have lower birth rates than the US. The thing that most of them have in common is that they are developed countries. Mainland China, an atheist country, has a higher birth rate than several Catholic countries. Mainland China is a developing country, while the Catholic countries that have lower birth rates than it are developed countries.

This supports what I am saying, which is that religion doesn't determine whether or not a country or a population will have a low or a high birth rate. What determines it is the economic environment of a given population and how well educated the women in that population are (this is backed up by studies as well).

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 02:10 PM

For that theory to work, one would have to define the term "well educated."

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 03:35 PM

If we were to think of it in terms of a scale, with one end of the scale being no education, and the other end being the most well educated in the world, the closer a population as a whole was to the "no education" end of the scale, the higher the birth rate would be, and the closer to the "most well educated in the world" end of the scale, the lower the birth rate would be.

Studies show that the single greatest influence in bringing down the birth rate of any given population, is educating the women of that population.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 06:21 PM

Carol, you are dead right. To lower the birth rate in any country what is most needed is to:

- reduce poverty
- educate people better, specially the women
- improve the women's economic circumstances and their power over determining their own personal destiny

Women are the glue that holds any society together. (men make a lot of surface noise, but the women keep things actually functioning in a coherent and useful fashion) Once the women in a society become free beings and are properly educated, that society cannot help but move forward to a far better condition for everyone.

And let me quote William Shatner when I add to the above this further statement: "I am a man!"

And I'm not stupid. ;-) I know what we owe to the women of this world.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 06:27 PM

I would also like to point out that I do not make that claim about educating women from a feminist perspective. I don't really consider myself a feminist. It's just what has been established by research into the reasons for birth rates being what they are in any given population.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 06:29 PM

Exactly.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 06:32 PM

So by educating women you mean teaching them to keep their legs crossed, hug?

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 07:06 PM

No. That's not what is meant. That's largely an irrelevancy.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 07:08 PM

...unless someone is suggesting that in developed countries, the way the birth rates are kept low is by teaching the women to keep their legs crossed. And if that's the case, I've got a big surprise for that person.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 09:01 PM

Go ahead, surprise me!

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 09:39 PM

LOL

Factoid - women in the US are, on the whole, very sexually active, and yet our birth rates are relatively low (2/3 of the world's countries have higher birth rates than we do).

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 10:42 PM

Yes! Thank you family planning. Now we need it in Costa Rica.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 11:29 PM

That's a part of educating the women. But only a part. Family planning isn't much good in the absence of women being educated and thereby empowered so they can take greater control over their lives.

Interestingly, Iran has a very good family planning program, that the government and the Mullahs themselves are responsible for. Which is probably one of the reasons for their low birth rate. And despite the stereotypes we have in the West about women in Iran, they are very well educated and very empowered, which no doubt also accounts for the low birth rate.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Riginslinger
Date: 28 Oct 09 - 11:01 AM

Carol, it seems like most of the friction with Iran is political. It's too bad people can't interact with each other and leave governments out of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Kucinich on the Bailout - interesting!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Oct 09 - 11:50 AM

Amen!

I have met a good many Muslims from Iran, Pakistan, Trinidad, Egypt, and many other places, and I have found them generally to be just as well, if not better educated than North Americans. I have found them to be just as modern in their attitudes as we are, and I am happy to say that many of them are good friends of mine.

The problems in the world are not caused by the ordinary population, most of whom are good people. They are caused by a very small number of politicians and big business people for the most part...and why? For money, that's why.