Loren Lippincott
This past spring in Nebraska more than 54,000 business “Help Wanted” signs and newspaper employment want ads were left wanting as those jobs remained unfilled. Meanwhile, our state’s unemployment rate is sixth lowest in the nation at 2.5 percent. Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the U.S. has an average unemployment rate of 3.9 percent and 12.4 million are seeking jobs.
Some would say young people are just not looking for work and are riding piggyback on their parents. However, I believe there is another obvious reason our economy and society is being impacted with so many jobs left unfilled. While I was campaigning for the legislature and now that I am in office I am repeatedly asked, “What are you doing to keep Nebraskans in Nebraska and to entice others to come here?” Our colleges and trade schools are dwindling in enrollment, our workforce is struggling and due to the competition for employees, wages keep climbing—not to mention the cost of everything going up due to “Bidenflation!” These numbers are undeniable.
The replacement birth rate (or zero population growth) is 2.11 children per family. This keeps the population at its present number (the .11 represents infant mortality). However, presently in America our birth rate is just 1.62. We are rapidly depopulating! There was a time in our history when if you saw a large family, it would often be assumed they were Catholic or Mormon or perhaps Muslim.
However, when our nation was founded Catholics made up just 1.8 percent of our population.
Protestants made up 98 percent and Jewish people were just 0.2 percent of the population.
Meanwhile, today’s Catholic birth rate is only 1.9 children per family, Mormons are at 2.8 and Islamic families have 2.5 children per family. The most prolific social group in the U.S. is the Amish at a fruitful 7.0 children per family. This is a drastic contrast to the dismal 0.98 percent birth rate among Euro-Americans. Our nation’s demographics are rapidly changing!
The introduction of various forms of birth control in the 1960s led to all birth rates dropping sharply— that and the cries of the population alarmists began about the same time to tell us we were headed for a “population explosion” the planet couldn’t sustain. But let’s put the world’s population in perspective. Did you know the entire eight billion people currently living on the planet could stand inside the city limits of Jacksonville, Fla.? Also, if you divided up all eight billion into families of four, each family could have a house and a yard of 66 by 66 feet and could live within the state of Texas? Our planet earth is not overpopulated, and besides, God knows what He is doing and has made provisions for us. I have flown for hours over Brazil at night and only seen a few lights in those many hundreds of miles.
I have flown all over the world and in many regions there is nothing but wide open spaces. I assure you we are not overpopulated!
With the aging of the baby boomers, however, we are headed for a demographic crisis. With the shrinkage of the labor force, there are fewer people to pump money into our everexpanding entitlement pool. The boomers are drawing money out of their government funded programs, while the money they paid in during their working years was paid out years ago.
We’re now taking the present generation’s money to print money, which amounts to generational theft! (Parenthetically, let me state that with the rate of return for Social Security at a measly 1.23 percent, it is far less than the rate of inflation and was never meant to be a person’s sole retirement income. And anyway is it not the government’s purpose to be anyone’s security blanket.)
One aspect of this demographic crisis that is hardly ever brought up on either side of the political aisle is the impact of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that essentially made abortion on demand legal across the country. The result of that disastrous (and demonic) ruling was wiping out the lives of more than 65 million people who would be in our labor force today. Meanwhile, our federal government (with our tax money) continues to support Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers who spill innocent blood by ending 18 percent of all pregnancies today in our country. (Another 20 percent are lost through miscarriages.)
The attack on those made in the image of God, has and is wreaking havoc on our workforce, our tax base, our economy and most importantly, the very soul of our nation. Consider the words of former HUD Secretary Dr.
Ben Carson citing a Brookings Institute study which showed in order to reduce poverty below 2 percent, people should finish high school, get married and wait to have kids after they are married. Marriage and intact families are a stabilizing influence on society.
When I was growing up on the farm, our nearest neighbors had eight children. Often I would walk the quarter mile to go play with them. I discovered the kids policed themselves, entertained themselves, challenged each other and taught one another, which resulted in their becoming mature and productive citizens. When I flew alongside pilots who had attended a military academy they told me it was the cadets who ran the place. The upper classmen would train the newcomers in military discipline and teach them what it took to be good officers. This worked quite well— much like our neighboring family. The first commandment God gave to mankind in Genesis chapter 1 was to “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” We are not fulfilling that very well today and it is having devastating ripple effects in our state and nation.
Loren Lippincott represents Legislative District 34 in the Nebraska State Senate. Read his column in the Nance County Journal.