December 2, 2008
Solving the Economic Crisis by Strengthening the Family
Bev Rice.jpgDear ~Contact.FirstName~,
The economic crisis is affecting families all over the world. Governments are struggling to find ways to solve the problems. Each day’s headlines detail a new attempt to boost the struggling economies. The plans have included: bailouts, stimulus packages, mortgage buy-backs, etc. Despite their best efforts there is one significant plan that has not been promoted. In all of the plans the economists and world leaders have suggested, none have suggested using the family to solve the world’s economic crisis.
How can the family be the answer? In the outstanding documentary, Demographic Winter, researchers discuss how the decline in population has caused a severe crisis for the nations of the world. For all of the economic solutions that have been suggested, the one component that is being forgotten is that if you do not have enough people to work in the factories, buy the goods, and purchase the homes, there will be no improvement.
What would happen if the world economies required growth but their countries were shrinking instead? This is a question posed by the documentary. A reduction in population does not equal economic prosperity. Just ask Russia. In Russia, with its population of just 145 million, the government is providing incentives to families to have children.
For every family who has more than one child, they receive the equivalent of $9,200. Why is the government paying people to have more children? With their declining population, Russian officials know that in a few years they will not have the manpower to defend their borders, run their hospitals, or work their shipyards.
The answer to solving our economic crisis is not found in paying people to have more children. The answer is found in changing government policies to strengthen families. Parents will only want to have more children if they know that the government will support those efforts with policies that make childrearing a top priority. Governments need to look for ways to help families provide stable, loving two-parent homes for children.
Today’s world is obsessively focused on the individual. That focus needs to be redirected to the family. As Demographic Winter points out, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement, and the environmental movement are all based on the misleading 1970’s theory of the population bomb. They are focused on the needs of the individual.
The reality of today’s world is that rather than having a population explosion, we are, instead, in the middle of a population implosion! We need to focus on families – not individuals. We need to have a family rights movement! We need our leaders to improve the economies of their countries by improving the stability of the family.
We need to understand that the safety and stability of countries in today’s world depend primarily on whether families in those countries feel stable and secure.
Join with United Families International as we work with families all over the world to find ways to strengthen their countries by strengthening their families first.
Thank You!
Beverly Rice
President
United Families International
Want to watch the amazing Demographic Winter documentary? United Families is offering this video as a gift to donors! Get your copy TODAY!
HOW TO TAKE THE CHILL OUT OF DEMOGRAPHIC WINTER
Excerpts from A speech by Don Feder to the New Generation Church, Riga, Latvia, November 16, 2007
Population decline (also known as demographic winter) is very much a reality.
Philip Longman, who is a demographer and the author of “The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity,” observes: “The ongoing global decline in human birthrates is the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations and the future of society in the 21st century.”
There are now 59 nations — with 44% of the world’s population — that have below-replacement fertility rates.
Would you be surprised to learn that while the world’s population increases, the number of children – a sure sign of the future – is declining? Worldwide, there are 6 million fewer children (6 years of age and younger) today than there were in 1990. This is the first tremor of what soon will be an earthquake.
In Europe, the number of children under 5 has fallen by a staggering 36% since 1960. The United Nations projects that, if current trends continue, by 2050 the world will hold 248 million fewer children under 5 than it does today.
Those 248 million children will never reach maturity (because they won’t exist) and will never have children of their own. That means that even if the next generation reproduces at a greater rate than their parents – we’re still heading for a demographic train-wreck.
This catastrophe in the making can be most clearly seen in Russia. What Lenin, Stalin and Hitler failed to accomplish, the Russian people are doing to themselves. You might call it auto-genocide.
In Russia, the fertility rate is 1.17 (down from 2.4 in 1990, a decline of over 50%). Russia is losing three-quarters of a million people a year. Its current population of 145 million is expected to be reduced by a third by 2050.
In Russia today, almost as many children are aborted as are born alive (1.5 million to 1.6 million).
In the Russian region of Ulyanovsk, 550 miles East of Moscow, September 12th is Day of Conception . Families that have children 9 months later on Russia’s National Day can win anything from cash prizes to cars and refrigerators.
Will paying families princely sums have children really work? I suspect not – though governments everywhere can and should make it easier for parents to raise children, out of self-interest if not fairness.
Is there a connection between economics and procreation? In Western Europe, a good economy has led to fewer children. In Russia, a bleak economy has led to fewer children. The road out of demographic winter isn’t paved with dollars — or rubles.
In industrialized nations, fewer and fewer workers will support pensions for more and more elderly. This will begin by severely straining national budgets, be followed by young workers repudiating social obligations, and end in the rationing of medical services and state-sponsored euthanasia.
Population decline means economic collapse.
Click here to read the rest of Don Feder’s speech
hollyandberries.jpgUnited Families Offers Christmas Gifts To All Donors!
United Families cannot protect a future for the family without YOUR help! To show our thanks for your support we will send the following:
$30 Donation: 1 Issue of Seeing the Everyday Magazine
$100 Donations: A 1-year subscription to Seeing the Everyday magazine
$150 Donation: A 1-year subscription to Seeing the Everyday magazine, a wonderful Christmas CD for your holiday season by pianist Jon Schmidt, PLUS the compelling Demographic Winter documentary!
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United Families International wants to help you with your shopping! You can select the checkbox on the donation form, choosing to send your UFI gift to a friend, college, or family member, and we contact you about shipping it to the lucky recipient!
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LET YOUR FRIENDS KNOW HOW THEY CAN PROTECT A FUTURE FOR THE FAMILY!
United Families along with other pro-family organizations around the world are working to gather signatures to be presented at the UN on December 10th to the delegates in the General Assembly. We are working to gather as many signatures as possible in order to show the UN that life and family are a human right and that there is a significant presence of pro-family individuals throughout the world.
Together the pro-family organizations have gathered over 200,000 signatures! We need YOUR help to keep this number growing. Please sign the petition in English, Spanish, French, or Portuguese TODAY! But that’s not all! In order for us to make a significant statement to the world, we need YOU TO HELP.
United Families needs YOU to forward the petition to ALL YOUR friends and family asking them to sign so that we can get as many signatures as possible.