As to your point, any government relies on a productive population. Even anarchy relies on a productive population. That fact does not support Lindgren’s claim that a) governments which redistribute wealth pursue population-growth strategies or b) that “you can’t run a welfare state without a growing population”. As you yourself say, bandit, “soemwhere[sic] there’s a balance between contributors and recipients”, which, if I may add, is partially a function of how much people are paying into the system when they’re productive vs. how much they take out when they get older. SS benefits in America don’t usually equal what somebody made when they were working, so we’re all used to the idea that the fund pays out less than you pay in.

Look, here’s what I’m trying to say but didn’t explicitly state before: the so-called “welfare state” enriches people. People who are enriched have less children. Therefore, a “welfare state” policy itself is population control. Therefore, for governments to encourage population growth, they would actively have to pursue policies that impoverish people. Lindgren’s argument, taken literally or metaphorically, is not true. Which, again, like I said before, is a completely sufficient argument against Francis in the first place. No need for potshots at states that give their citizens retirement money.

And to tackle the idea that first world nations “promote moderate population growth”, the European nations which actually offer benefits to people to have children aren’t trying to grow their populations, they’re trying to keep them from shrinking, and that’s far more due to their fears of waning cultural and political influence than it is to some perceived need to make enough money for this welfare Ponzi scheme. The US has no active program to combat its lack of population growth. The reason our population is nearly at a stable rate (the CIA World Factbook says that the 2009 population growth estimate is 0.975%, which is actually a loss) is because of a very strong religious movement in the US as well as widespread poverty.

Clearly, Lindgren’s assertion that a welfare state is a Ponzi scheme rests on a foundation of quicksand and a shaky grasp of facts. As for example, this assertion: “As Mark Steyn has repeatedly pointed out, you can’t run a welfare state without a growing population.” Which means that they haven’t noticed that these European countries that conservatives over here love to excoriate as “socialist states” also happen to actually have shrinking populations.

And as for Lindgren’s stupid personal dig, it shows he can’t even do the math: how many people does it take to have 2 children? At least 2 adults. That’s beneath the replacement rate of 2.1, so…what is Lindgren pointing out? As far as I’m concerned, he basically opened his mouth and firmly inserted both feet. And probably is too stupid to know it.

I suppose I am now misreading both Mrs. Francis article (about world wide (read first world) adoption of China’s policy) and Mr. Lindgren’s response about how current first world governments promote moderate population growth to pay into an ever expanding welfare state.

While it is true that I believe that Mr. Lindgren finds Mrs. Francis article distasteful. His true argument is that no first world government would adopt such a policy, since it is destructive to that country’s welfare state’s existence.

Unlike Jim Lindgren, we permit people to criticize us in comments. You are not required, however, to edit your comments.

I guess I didn’t make this clear, but welfare states are overwhelmingly first world nations, and nations concerned about population growth are overwhelmingly developing countries. There is no welfare state in China.