Thanks! In my experience, ‘cliched and obnoxious’ frequently equals, “true.”

jpz, I find your remarks cliched and obnoxious. It’s well established that high fertility rates coincide with the worst oppression of women through state and religion. Education of women is the major factor in decreasing fertility through take-up of contraception. The fertility rate in Mexico (and you did state “Mexico”, not USA)is now heading down to 2 and will probably drop below that in the next few years.

As to the CIA Factbook, I think it’s just a straightforward compendium of facts as revealed in official stats. The little introductory stories to the various sections are a different matter, but I skip them.

Well that is a very astute point, and I wish you would broadcast it more loudly. A good observation, and one which I don’t see made very often.

“I checked the CIA Factbook for Mexico…”

Yeah, that’s one way of gathering data. You know what I did instead? I spent a number of years working with Mexican emigres, interviewing them, and collecting point-specific information about their lives. Hoo-whee! Come and ride a bus some time, in pretty much any city in California, Arizona, Texas (and now Illinois, Oregon, North Carolina, etc. etc.) What you see will be pretty interesting. What you hear –and what you don’t hear– might be even more interesting. (And as I recall, the CIA also told us there were WMDs hidden under all the sofas in Iraq, as well.)

What Mexicans want to do in Mexico is of no concern or interest to me. But if what they get up to begins to massively impact what happens in my own country, in every conceivable dimension, then yes, I feel bound to take notice.

j_p_z, no you’re not retarded, but to me it seems you think that Mexicans breed out of sheer wilful stupidity. I checked the CIA Factbook for Mexico against the World, and some perhaps comparable countries. Their fertility rate of 2.42 per woman ranks 108/222 and is almost spot on the world average. They are close to the world average on quite a few measures, but have a low death rate, noticeably lower than for the US. So they are no good at dying. Migrating isn’t ranked but they seem quite good at that.

If the poor are breeding rapidly, as they seem to in most places, then perhaps Jeffrey Sachs has a clue in concentrating on the education of women, starting with providing meals at school and encouraging the girls to go to school. That is as part of a comprehensive aid program.

Of course we don’t want to turn the thread over to how to bust poverty but as a last word I’d say that I’m not keen on comprehensive free trade agreements unless the countries have similar levels of development, similar social structures and similar values. But that is another big topic.

If they want to go on breeding like rabbits, then Vegas odds are pretty certain that they will just have to, well, live like rabbits.

j_p_z, this is irrelevant even if you want to defend the idea that it is correct.

US NAFTA corn displaces Mexican corn

Mexican corn price rises leaving some Mexicans eating noodles

Surely we can all understand this simple story without getting our knickers twisted over the relative breeding rates of different populations.

In Australia we don’t have any special animus towards Mexicans so you rant seems misplaced. Now, if you wanted instead to talk about Lebanese ..

As to breeding like rabbits. I’m here to tell you that your calling them on it is going to change things not one little bit. I’ve noticed that human reproduction is not a perticularly rational matter. If anyone asked me whether it was rational to have kids, I’d tell them, no. Funnily enough no-one asks me or seems the slightest bit interested in what I think!