Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (August 1, 2018)
The stock market and the overall economy remain quite robust. There have been repeated calls for a massive crash of both since at least 1995, but nothing major has transpired outside of the partial crashes which took place in 2000-2002 and again in 2007-2009.
I will now continue with a discussion about the major demographic changes taking place in our world. Birth rates have collapsed, people are living longer, the traditional family structure is under tremendous stress, families are smaller, and the relative sizes of the major human ethnic groups are shifting.
Asians have long been the largest group within the human family. At the time of Jesus Christ, the world human population was about 200 million, 50 million of whom lived in China. The percentage of Asians in the world peaked at 66% of the human race in 1750. Today it stands at 60 percent and by the year 2100 (82 years from now) it is projected to fall to 52 percent. Families are still relatively large on the Indian subcontinent, but in other parts of Asia they have become very small – especially in places such as China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Iran and in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Like all regions which experienced European and American colonization, Africa suffered a relative loss in population for many years. Africa’s percentage of the worldwide human population fell from 74 percent in A.D. 550 to just 7 percent by 1900. Today it stands at 16 percent, but it is projected to skyrocket to 38 percent by the year 2100. The reason for this is that Africans have the largest traditional family structure in the world today – the highest birth and fertility rates which compare with how birth and fertility rates were in America, Europe and Asia a generation or so ago.
Europeans reached a peak of worldwide population of 32 percent of the human race in 1900 – a few years before they commenced the fratricidal and suicidal experience of World Wars One and Two. Their percentage of the world population has fallen to merely 10 percent today, and it is projected to collapse to just 3 percent by the year 2100. European birth rates have collapsed, and many residents of the “Old World” are no longer of European extraction – many immigrants from Asia Minor, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Asia have migrated to Europe since 1950 to fill a huge void in the European labor market.
Latin America and the Caribbean comprised 8 percent of the world population in A.D. 450 but this had fallen to just one percent by the year 1750. The region suffered tremendously due to European colonization, and the Native American populace had little or no immunity to childhood diseases from the Old World. Latin America (Central and South America) and the Caribbean peaked at 10 percent of world population in 2005, they stand at 9 percent today and are projected to fall to 5 percent by the year 2100. This decline is also due to collapsing demographics – fewer births, smaller families and weaker traditional families.
The USA is experiencing a major demographic shift comparable to what is happening in Europe. America’s population continues to grow, but this is entirely due to immigration from all over the world – especially from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. A belief in “Manifest Destiny” and abundant immigration from Europe translated into American expansion beyond the original 13 colonies after the Revolutionary War of Independence from Great Britain in 1783. The Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon’s France, the addition of Spanish Florida (including the Gulf Coast), the purchase of the Pacific Northeast from Canada (Britain) but especially the armed conquest of Texas and the Spanish southwest brought America to the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Next came the Alaska Purchase from Imperial Russia in 1867, and ultimately the armed conquest of Hawaii plus Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba from the Spanish Crown in 1898.
America became a true global power during World War One and America replaced Great Britain as the foremost superpower during World War Two. On Pearl Harbor Day in 1941, America’s population was 91 percent Caucasian. Today, this has fallen to 41 percent. If one omits European-Americans who still maintain strong cultural ties to their “old country,” this drops even further to a mere 33 percent. The USA in 2018 is 21 percent Hispanic (including undocumented immigrants), 13 percent Black, one percent Native American (the largest Indian nation being that of the Navajo in the “Four Corners” region), 5 percent Asian & Pacific Islander, 5 percent Arab & Muslim and 3 percent Multiracial. Other groups of statistical note include veterans (7 percent), LBGTQ (4 percent) and those who are incarcerated (one percent). America has one of the highest rates of incarceration on earth – not something of which we can be proud.
European-American groups maintaining strong cultural & religious ties to their heritage include the Germans / Austrians / Swiss (Amish, Pennsylvania Dutch, Brethren German Baptist, Mennonites and Evangelical Lutheran Church), the Armenians, the Eastern Orthodox (largely Greek, Russian, Serbian and Romanian), the Mormons, the Reformed Churches (Dutch Reformed, Swiss & Hungarian Calvinist and Scottish Presbyterian), and the Scandinavians (the Evangelical Lutheran Church). Most American Jews have an Ashkenazi Germanic and Yiddish heritage, a number of European-Americans still speak the language of the “old country.” These include Welsh Gaelic (2,000 individuals), Irish Gaelic (22,000), Finnish (26,000), Swedish (57,000), Dutch & Flemish (136,000), Polish (540,000), Italian (754,000), French (2 million largely in Louisiana and Acadia) and German (7.5 million).
On top of collapsing global human demographics, the natural world is under stress like never before – both animal and plant species are dying out in unprecedented rates. Of the entire global population of mammals, human beings comprise 36 percent of the total. 60 percent of mammals today are domesticated animals – both livestock and companion animals. A mere 4 percent of mammals are wild animals – a testament to how they have nearly died off. A similar trend can be seen among the global population of birds – 70 percent are domesticated (poultry and pets) and merely 30 percent are wild. Of the total amount of “biomass” on earth (an estimated 560 billion tonnes C), 82 percent is comprised of flora (plant life), 13 percent is bacteria and 5 percent is comprised of living beings (animals, fish, insects and fungi). Due to species extinction, biodiversity has collapsed markedly. If we were to compare this to what has happened to the human population alone, we could point to the rapid decline in the number of historical languages and dialects which have virtually disappeared. Once they are gone, we will never get them back – and we will be very much the poorer for that loss.
