Rusted Sky

This has been going on for a long time and its just now getting noticed and people like thee and me are part of the problem.

Your little guy has how many brothers and sisters? How many of the couples we know have more than two kids? How many of the couples at Atomicon a couple of weekends ago have more than one kid. How many couples, like Betty and I, have none?

The prediction that the more educated and the more affluent a couple is the fewer children they will raise is, if anything, a vast understatement of the actual result. Judging by what I've seen among our friends, simply raising enough children to take the place of their parents is a economically unattainable goal for most middle-class families.

otpu

On a related topic, in the Wall Street Journal's online Opinion Journal writer Michael Barone has this to say on the shifting demographics of America.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010045

New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois--are projected to lose five House seats in the 2010 Census, while California, which has gained seats in every census since it was admitted to the Union in 1850, is projected to pick up none.

...........

The nation's center of gravity is shifting: Dallas is now larger than San Francisco, Houston is now larger than Detroit, Atlanta is now larger than Boston, Charlotte is now larger than Milwaukee. State capitals that were just medium-sized cities dominated by government employees in the 1950s--Sacramento, Austin, Raleigh, Nashville, Richmond--are now booming centers of high-tech and other growing private-sector businesses. San Antonio has more domestic than immigrant inflow even though the border is only three hours' drive away.

...........

Demography is destiny. When I was in kindergarten in 1950, Detroit was the nation's fifth largest metro area, with 3,170,000 people. Now it ranks 11th and is soon to be overtaken by Phoenix, which had 331,000 people in 1950. In the close 1960 election, in which electoral votes were based on the 1950 Census, Michigan cast 20 votes for John Kennedy and Arizona cast four votes for Richard Nixon; New York cast 45 votes for Kennedy and Florida cast 10 votes for Nixon. In 2012, Michigan will likely have 16 electoral votes and Arizona 12; New York will have 29 votes and Florida 29. That's the kind of political change demographics makes over the years.

Looks like the legal wrangling over the Constitutionally mandated congressional re-apportionment following the 2010 census is going to make the 2012 election an even bigger media feeding frenzy than the 2001 election.

otpu

PIMF: that should have been the infamous 2000 election where a feeble attempt engineered by the Democratic Party to use the Florida State Supreme Court throw Florida's electoral college votes to Al Gore failed miserably in the U.S. Supreme Court.

otpu

Among the kids at the little guy's school, there's a very significant number (more than 50%) who have two or more in the same family attending. Of the kids at his birthday party Saturday, only one didn't have a brother or sister, while one had a brother AND a sister.

But you're right about our immediate circle - most with one, only two with two. And you can, of course, count Vanessa's incipient young'un as a one.

BTW, don't get me started on the 2000 election and the Dem trickery in Florida. Just... don't.

J.