Guest Post by Simon Black
Global cooling was the big fear in the early 1970s, believe it or not.
Experts in climate, ecology, and geology from top universities like Stanford and Brown all seemed to form a consensus that a new ice age would be upon us by 2020.
By 1988, the major fear had shifted to global warming, with United Nations experts predicting entire countries would be underwater by the year 2000, due to melting ice caps.
In 2002 scientists predicted that there would be a catastrophic worldwide famine within a decade if everyone didn’t give up eating meat.
In 2008, climatologists said the Arctic would be free of ice by 2018– Al Gore said the ice would be gone by 2013.
Please don’t misunderstand– I don’t ‘deny’ climate change. In fact I put my money where my mouth is with solar panels and plenty of other sustainability measures.
Plus one of my primary businesses is agriculture, and our own data shows that the climate is changing. It’s no small matter.
But taking climate change seriously is a far cry from overblown predictions that the world is going to end in a few years.
Case in point: the climate change scaremongering has become so extreme that it’s affecting people’s decisions about whether or not to have children.
A 31-year-old woman recently told researchers “Climate change is the sole factor for me in deciding not to have biological children. I don’t want to birth children into a dying world [though] I dearly want to be a mother.”
14% of surveyed Americans between the age of 18 and 44 said that they are choosing to NOT have children, specifically BECAUSE of climate change.
In another survey, 6% of parents said they regretted having children because they are “terrified that they will be facing the end of the world due to climate change.”
Perhaps the biggest proof, though, is in the data. Women in advanced countries are having fewer babies than ever before.
The fertility rate is the average number of babies a woman has over the course of her life.
And since men cannot have babies (despite what you might have heard from ‘scientists’) the fertility rate has to remain over 2 children per woman in order to keep population levels stable.
The fertility rate has collapsed to about 1.7 in the United States, 1.55 across Europe, and 1.4 in Japan. It has even dipped below 1 in places like Singapore and South Korea.
And even though climate change is a cause for concern, all the fear mongering that is now affecting fertility rates has created another major catastrophe:
Who is going to take care of the aging population?
Retirement programs like Social Security depend on there being about 3 workers paying into the system to support every single retiree drawing benefits.
Even the Social Security Administration acknowledges that its trust funds will be depleted by 2035, and there will not be enough workers paying into the system to support the number of retirees.
(Update: Due to COVID-19’s economic impact, the data now suggest that Social Security’s trust funds will be depleted as early as 2029.)
And it’s a similar story throughout the world. Most retirement systems require a steadily growing population of workers to be able to pay pension and social security benefits to retirees.
But with so many people choosing to NOT have children (often due to climate change fears), it will become impossible to maintain that steadily-growing work force in the future.
Simply put, in 20-30 years, there won’t be enough workers anymore to pay retirement benefits.
It’s amazing that almost nobody is talking about this.
Climate change is a major topic. Politicians talk all the time about their bold plans to save the world.
But you rarely hear anyone talking about Social Security. Or if they do, they think they can tweak a tax rate or two, and poof, problem solved.
Sorry, but this is a $50+ TRILLION dollar problem, and that’s just in the United States. They can’t simply write a check and be done with it.
I feel compelled to write about this topic from time to time to remind our readers that retirement is a ticking timebomb… and one that the government cannot diffuse. In fact they’re ignoring it altogether.
But the good news is that you don’t have to wait for some politician to save the day; you can secure your own retirement all by yourself.
That could mean researching retirement destinations with a lower cost of living, slashing fees in your retirement account, or taking advantage of robust structures like a solo 401(k) or SEP IRA to maximize contributions to your retirement account.
Those structures are especially interesting because you can contribute over $60,000 per year in certain cases to your retirement. Plus you can invest in a much wider variety of assets, like real estate, cryptocurrency, and private equity.
And in the case of a solo 401(k), you may actually be able to borrow some money from your own retirement plan without penalty.
You could even make these contributions with money you earn on the side, including a small business you run from your home.
There are plenty of steps you can take, large and small, to secure your retirement. But the most important thing is to acknowledge that this is a real problem that’s not going to magically disappear.
Every year that goes by is one year closer to a major retirement crisis– now potentially just 9 years away. So it’s crucial to take action soon.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
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STOP IT! Don’t listen to the narrative of fear, chaos & general doom and gloom. Live life, deal with ass-hats as necessary, ignore bull crap and get on with it all. Enough of this double standard bull crap.
Women in advanced countries are having fewer children because they are smarter than ones in less advanced countries. Maybe they realize that the biggest problem in the world is overpopulation and it is easier to pay for and raise a smaller family. It should still be good to have a moderate sized family, just large broods of kids that people are unable to provide for and raise to adulthood, should be contained. As far as social security goes. Eliminate the income cap. Problem solved. If you have a problem with that, you are a greedy self centered #$%$.
In poor countries having lots of kids is the retirement insurance policy! Nobody else and certainly not the government is going to take care of you in old age……so in more developed economies, fertility rates fall because the State can actually take of old folks at least for a while.
Then you add in all socialist pressure about climate or freedom for women etc….and suddenly nobody is getting married and having kids……
Self fulling prophecy……destroy the nuclear family makes women more dependent on the state……rinse and repeat and eventually nobody works in the private sector, nobody has kids and the whole thing collapses.
Overpopulation is the term spewed by the ill informed. Its especially popular with the communist elites and their zombies, you know like the dirtbag Gates.
Canukistan alone can feed every man, woman and child on this planet today. There are vast tracts of land where people don’t live only because they’ve become urban dependent for the most part.
The real problem is the communist influences among the nations citizenry. The feminist’s movement alone has done more damage than anything else for the nations women. Like Martel stated as well there has been a concerted effort to destroy the nuclear family along with small businesses, identity, morality, work ethic etc etc… Post Modernal Deconstruction is the tearing down everything that is conservative western civilization. To be turned on its head with as much chaos and confusion as possible. To be replaced by the ‘Great Reset”. and this should worry you.
“But with so many people choosing to NOT have children (often due to climate change fears), it will become impossible to maintain that steadily-growing work force in the future.”
Enter the illegal aliens, who, for some “unknown reason,” have absolutely NO problem having COPIOUS numbers of children. So… “They” let ’em in, at which point they’re indoctrinated into the SS Ponzi scheme. Of course, that “unknown reason” for their fertility is most likely the fact that you and I are PAYING for those children. So… they too, will pay into a system that is still doomed to fall apart, albeit a little further down the line than before… Long enough for those who STOLE from SS in the first place to die, and thus escape prosecution…
…And the beat goes on…
Coffee helps me change the things that I know I can do . Bourbon helps me accept the things I know that I can’t change. Tequila helps me say, ” Fuck It All ” .
I tried that once and all I did was break my glasses when I hit the ground face first. For a few hrs it worked just fine. Then I had to crawl back into reality.
I don’t even worry about the climate. I think we are in a cooling period and I can deal with it. The Democrats and their crazy ideas are more of a problem to me. Most shallow people I meet tell me kids are too expensive.
The superJoo Alan Greenspan said it best about SS. We guarantee you will get your check, but we don’t guarantee what that check can buy. SS is in no trouble, the value of the dollar is.
Sorry but the Sun is “hibernating” its’ Sunspots for the next 30 to 100 years so the whole Solar System is cooling, and a cooler Earth is far worse for people than a wormer Earth (food & fuel wise). For most American taxpayers, if you wait until you can afford children, you’ll never have any. In my experience, Climate Change and finances were nothing compared to the Hell caused by feminism and divorces.
I quit reading when the phrase “Trust Fund” appeared. There is no trust fund. SCOTUS said so. All revenue received aka stolen by any governments go directly into the General Fund. Since the Federal Government of the united States runs a deficit each and every year, indicates it has been bankrupt for quite some time.