The Wealth of Nations

It is the children, stupid. Adam Smith could have put a footnote in his book but he probably assumed that we had figured out that much.

We should have made babies instead of making deals.

How are we, Europeans, going to maintain wealth without offspring? Why produce a sea of products and services when there will be no demand for them.

Globalization?

Ah, yes, but globalization just now is working the other way, carrying production and wealth on the others side of the frontier. Restructuration? Reengineering? Reforms?

Ah, yes, but this is politico-techno speak for getting poor in style, meaning : getting poor as our multinationals are still registering record profits.

Tax laws penalize working couples. Besides, 40% of German mothers with a career have no children. Italy soon will have an average population age of blooming 54. Spain is no better. Just guess how public budgets will look with increased demands on social services and decreased taxes?

Isn’t it interesting how the sins we committed are punishing us? I am not fond of popes but on this account they were right. A powerful mix of loose sex, materialism and egoism has produced the childless society. Better have a Porsche in the garage than a baby in the cradle. “Showing off” is in, “sharing with” is out.

So, who shall wish to share with us when we’ll seat in our rolling chair. We may not find a younger person to push it, or may be, someone will push it down the staircase. Ah yes, technology! We shall have electric rolling chairs with 88 inbuilt TV channels, getting a new one for each birthday. Something to look forwards to.

Can we imagine how dynamic and creative it is going to feel in this grey Europe?

It will be too late to blame our myopic politicians for doing nothing in support of healthy European families.

So is there a future or a solution?

Probably intelligent immigration policies would be part of it. We should import the 30 million younger foreign workers that we need. But we shall treat them well and give them our nationality if they so wish. However we should look for them carefully, in the light of the needs of our economies. We should invite them from any peaceful and hard working communities, get people, say, from India or Vietnam and not, please, automatically import zealots that will be busy knitting the crazy jihad networks under the fiery homilies of bearded imams. If the future of Europe is the chador, this is not future at all.

Multiculture is not in itself the solution. We should again make babies. For this to be worth it, love giving, pleasurable and long-term fun, we need a bit more than just re-switching the procreation cycle. Without genuine spirituality there is no genuine morality. Without morality there is no trust between man and woman. Without fidelity in the couple there is neither happy family nor happy children. And if children are unhappy or nasty, who the hell want them?

Love must flow again and not just love in the sense of “baby, baby, one more time”.

Spirituality? Love? MTV is not going to tell you how to achieve this nor the aged baby boomers of the defunct flower generation who tried for a while. The churches are too empty, the mosques too full.

Yet, the wealth of nations depends on their spiritual wealth. Hard working Protestants created the ethics of capitalism, which, of course, then went on his own way.

There is more to wealth creation than hard work.

To recreate beautiful families we need to go inside.

It is the divine child inside which is the solution.

He never ages.