Christian Domestic Discipline

[delalluvia]

Parenthood is now the equivalent of servitude? I guess if we're all gonna be "free" the species will have to die out.

6 billion people on the planet and climbing...I daresay we can drop the birthrate to zero world-wide for several generations before we have start to worry about such things.

[serious crayons]

6 billion people on the planet and climbing...I daresay we can drop the birthrate to zero world-wide for several generations before we have start to worry about such things.

Except those of us who would like to have a workforce around for the next few decades to help subsidize our Social Security checks and massive health-care bills.

[delalluvia]

Except those of us who would like to have a workforce around for the next few decades to help subsidize our Social Security checks and massive health-care bills.

Less people for more jobs means we can demand higher salaries.  Higher salaries, larger taxes.  It works out. 

[delalluvia]

Jeeeze...I hope things will improve. "As many as God will give us" my ass.

Ditto.     Such men are always really good about how many children "God will give us", when they don't have to mess with the children.

Letting God do his will is basically letting nature take its course.  If it meant his death or his health was at risk, I daresay he'd interrupt God's will with medical treatment and surgery, but not when it comes to family planning and birth control.

Wonder why that is? 

I'm so so sorry Lee that you find your daughter married to a man whose attitude harkens back to the 16th century and Martin Luther who famously said,

"If they [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth, that's why they are there."

[Jeff Wrangler]

I think it's admirable if parents decide to use reusable diapers to save space in landfills.

That's what I was thinking, reusable/cloth diapers not creating as much trash as disposables. Water is a renewable resource (except maybe in Texas right now   ), and it's possible to use environmentally friendly soap. There is, of course, the question of power used to heat the water and run an automatic machine.

I sure hope Lee's daughter doesn't have to use a warshboard!  

But this is really OT, so let be, let be.

[serious crayons]

Less people for more jobs means we can demand higher salaries.  Higher salaries, larger taxes.  It works out. 

Not necessarily. I'm talking about when all the baby boomers are retired (the first of them are just retiring now). Setting aside medical care, retired people buy fewer goods and services. Thus, consumer demand shrinks along with the workforce. Jobs shrink along with consumer demand. So there are fewer people for fewer jobs, paying less in taxes, yet more people requiring the government support their taxes provide, in the form of Social Security and Medicare.

I happened to be gathering statistics on this very subject just last week for a project at work. 

[delalluvia]

That's what I was thinking, reusable/cloth diapers not creating as much trash as disposables. Water is a renewable resource (except maybe in Texas right now   ), and it's possible to use environmentally friendly soap. There is, of course, the question of power used to heat the water and run an automatic machine.

I sure hope Lee's daughter doesn't have to use a warshboard!  

But this is really OT, so let be, let be.

Fresh water isn't a renewable resource.  It takes a lot of money and power and chemicals to make polluted water drinkable.  The aquifers under the country are being sucked dry as we speak.  Usually, they are renewed by precipitation soaking into the ground and filling up the underground aquifers, but technology has allowed people to live so far north, that those in the north are pumping water out of the aquifers before it gets a chance to fill up sufficiently for people further south to use it.  People down south have to drill further and further down to get to it.  Water is wasted tremendously in evaporation watering crops grown by irrigation in desert regions - I can't tell you how I cringe every time I see those glorious water fountains in Las Vegas.  California also has sporadic droughts and their population is enormous.  I believe northern Georgia ran dry last year.  In Texas, we're in the middle of the worst drought in decades, and even when we didn't have this dry spell, city planners had already predicted decades ago that the burgeoning new suburbs didn't have enough fresh water sources to supply their populations and they were going to have to buy water from other cities.  You'd think the government would step in and limit building to keep the population moving to these areas from growing beyond the ability of their water sources, but they didn't.

It is not as plentiful a resource as one might imagine.  

[delalluvia]

Not necessarily. I'm talking about when all the baby boomers are retired (the first of them are just retiring now). Setting aside medical care, retired people buy fewer goods and services. Thus, consumer demand shrinks along with the workforce. Jobs shrink along with consumer demand. So there are fewer people for fewer jobs, paying less in taxes, yet more people requiring the government support their taxes provide, in the form of Social Security and Medicare.

I happened to be gathering statistics on this very subject just last week for a project at work. 

What makes you think many of the baby boomers will get to retire?  Many lost their retirement in the crash and will have to keep working another decade - if they can keep their jobs.

[serious crayons]

What makes you think many of the baby boomers will get to retire?  Many lost their retirement in the crash and will have to keep working another decade - if they can keep their jobs.

Sure, but eventually they'll either retire or be too sick to work or be dead. The sad facts of mortality. They may work longer than their parents did, but nobody works forever. And your post to which I was originally responding mentioned "several generations" -- i.e., approximately 60 years.

Meanwhile, many of the baby boomers I know are being laid off, thus forced into retirement in their late 50s or early 60s.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Fresh water isn't a renewable resource.

Yes, it is. It isn't necessarily where people want it--and perhaps you missed my parenthetical comment about Texas, which was not meant as a joke--but the total amount of water on the planet is not diminishing. It's easier to clean up water than it is to go on indefinitely taking up land to bury poopie disposable diapers.

I agree with you about the fountains in Las Vegas. I also remember when people moved to the Southwest to escape the flora and climate of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and instead they've just replicated that flora in the Southwest (lawns, plants not native to the area), and it takes water to do that. That was just plain stupid.

But ill-advised and stupid misuse of water resources by ill-advised and stupid people does not mean that water is not a renewable resource. As long as rain continues on the planet, water will be a renewable resource.