I have long been deeply skeptical of the Chicago school of economics, and the presumption of it that there is an economic explanation for nearly every human phenomenon.  So it is with a bit of trepidation that I risk indulging in such, for there seems to me a rather simple explanation for the decline in fertility (i.e. birthrates) across countries around the world.  In the post WWII era almost every advanced nation has at some point seen a startling decline in population growth which has in many places gone below the replacement rate and is plunging the country into population decline.  Of all of the explanations I have seen for this, I have not seen the one that seems to me the most obvious – children flipped from being an asset to a family to being a liability.  We now very much think about the expense of raising children versus the old down-on-the-farm tradition of having more hands to contribute to the family welfare.  From a consumption standpoint, children are luxury goods!  It would be economically irrational to deliberately increase liabilities; so as long as this condition persists, there will be no baby boom.

What makes this interesting is how economics is both cause and effect, smaller families the consequence of the cost of child rearing, and the developing demographic contraction (absent offsetting immigration) impacting economic growth.  The generosity of welfare programs is predicated upon a robust base of taxpaying workers and that base is shrinking.  The great argument of economic growth is that everyone can have an increase over what they had in the past; the only catch with that is that humans are more concerned with how they stand relative to other people in the present than with the actual improvement in their own condition.  If the economy ceases to grow because population is static or shrinking – that’s a whole new ballgame.

Which leads me to equality and the not-entirely-surprising evolution into equity.  Harrison Bergeron predicted this, as did 1984.  In fact there isn’t any reason for equality, as imagined anywhere from 50 to 200 years ago, to be conserved as an inviolable concept.  Over that entire time, the application of equality was indeed expanded to classes of people formerly excluded from it (and as had been the trajectory ever since the Magna Carta, which only secured baronial rights against the Sovereign).  Since equality, in almost any circumstance runs counter to easily observed reality, it is an artificial construct we impose upon society and like a Frankenstein’s monster, it takes on a life of its own.  And no one, but no one, is going to argue for a limited equality, even if that’s what was once the core of the concept.  We are trapped by our own beliefs.

Of course it takes an outside, objective judge to enforce such equality – our very own Diana Moon Glampers.  We’re painfully aware of those who imagine themselves fit for that role.  Hamilton was distrusted by his fellow Founders because he had an arch-conservative desire for a neo-aristocracy.  It should be little wonder that his reputation be so high these days within the progressive-sphere.  Equality can only be truly achieved and enforced by an unequal, privileged elite.  Of course they aren’t equal, they’re better, but they make sure that the common person isn’t troubled by the sight of someone better off than himself (provided there are no pesky photographers hanging around The French Laundry).  And thus equality is eaten by itself (through that need for enforcement), just as the revolution always eats its young.

One thing the Anglo-American tradition is terribly wrong about is universality – because universality ignores locality, the specificity of culture.  This is best illustrated in the failure of capitalist economics to take root in cultures that don’t share the precepts of Anglo-American culture.  We have all kinds of names to describe what we consider to be mutant forms of capitalism, but all of that stems from the ill-conceived conceit that our idea of capitalism is universal.  We have the same problem when it comes to our form of government, and the export thereof.  The rest of Western thought doesn’t make quite the same error, and thus you get continental Romanticism and nationalism (or as in the case of Spain – de-nationalization).  You also see why Anglo colonialism was actually different than Continental colonialism – not better necessarily, but different.  Given that America was born out of anti-colonial sentiment (or resentment), you can also see how the redeemer of the colonial world mentality grew (Wilson to FDR) even as it was in conflict with the American interest to dominate (from Manifest Destiny and Banana-wars to Cold War and Liberal Global Order).  Perhaps the best expression of the motives (and conflict within them) ever given was in the movie The Coca-Cola Kid.  The protagonist says: The world will not be truly free until Coke is available everywhere.  It is delivered without a trace of irony and with absolute earnestness (and could there be a more perfect expression of American character).

The great value to the world that America once provided, was a safety valve – a domain where the misfits within the old country could emigrate.  They could uproot and find opportunity and happiness in a country that sold itself, and them, on a set of ideals.  I don’t think most immigrants truly believed that they themselves would be treated as equals (which they certainly hadn’t been in their own culture), but they had the hope that their children would.  For generations this actually worked, but I think those times are as in the past as Jim Crow.  The extent to which an economy grows, built on and providing opportunity, is a reflection of the regard for the future that is culturally grounded.

Of course I’m just another random idiot on the internet, it’s pretty likely that I’m wrong.