Monday 3 February 2014

The 85 people running the world

Bill Gates Applauds Thailand's Demographic Suicide


With smashing timing, Bill and Melinda Gates released a missive in the Wall Street Journal about the three myths on the world's poor coinciding with a report announcing that the top richest 85 people (a list they are solidly on) in the world have more money than the poorest 3.5 billion or 50% of the entire world's population.

This is an insane wealth gap. These people and their bajillions are essentially running the world.


In the third myth of their response, the Gates' commend Thailand as a great example of family planning because Thai women went from having an average of six children per woman just a few decades ago to having an average of 1.6 children today.

There's just one problem. Replacement rate - that is the number of children needed to maintain a stable population - is 2.1 (but it's even higher for countries with higher mortality rates).

That means that Thailand is below replacement rate, a reality that is screwing up the country's social and economic foundations.

It's so bad in Thailand, actually, that articles have detailed the "aging crisis" the country now faces due to the low birth rate. In fact, all the Asian nations are now facing this issue, and most of the developed world is below replacement rate as well.

Leave it to Bill Gates, billionaire eugenicist extraordinaire, to applaud a country for committing demographic suicide.

For more on "conscience laundering" and the Charitable-Industrial Complex, see here.