Sunday, February 17, 2008

Will the last Republican please turn off the lights?

I remain hopeful that John McCain will be the next President, but if he is, he may be the last Republican to hold that office. You probably saw the census department projections for the U.S. population in 2050, and it doesn’t look good for the GOP.

White people of European decent will be less than half the population. Hispanics will be nearly 30%, and another 20% will be an immigrant from somewhere. Undoubtedly there will be some overlap in those two groups, but probably at least 40% of the population will belong to a group that Republicans policies do not exactly embrace. I don’t know how you could win a national election with those numbers.

The projections also show the total population growing by almost 50% with most of the growth coming from immigration, or high birth rates among recent immigrants. At the same time we’re seen a concentration of income and wealth among a smaller percentage of the population.
The message of lower taxes and less government intervention in our lives has an ever shrinking sympathetic audience, while those naturally disposed to reject these concepts will grow.

Something has to give, no?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is estimated that by 2050 the US will have @450 million and by 2100 1 billion in population. All of this population growth is due to immigrants and their offspring. We currrently allow 1 million legal immigrants (more then any other country) and another 750,000 in illegal immigrants. Political issues aside, where will all of these people live and what will they do for jobs? The strain on our resources will be incredible. This is one of the issues that our leaders are afraid to tackle because of the political costs of taking a stand. The problems that will result from our immigration "crisis" will be much more immediate then the threat from global warming. If you do not believe that this is happening, just look around.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure that immigration is a more immediate problem than global warming but putting that political hot potato aside for the moment, I don't think our political system is equipped to deal with an issue of this magnitude involving huge cohorts of people. Our system, as it is currently practiced, is concerned with one and only one thing -- getting reelected. Getting reelected requires carving constituencies large enough to ensure job security. Immigrants don't vote and therefore don't enter into the electoral calculation unless it's to play their customary role of bogeyman. I'm not suggesting that they get to vote. I just think the problem will be ignored except as an election issue by the right.

d'blank said...

Haven't you heard? We're putting up a fence at the border. That's going to solve the immigration problem right there.