[lit-ideas] Re: Europe's future, catastrophic or apocalyptic

  • From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 11:58:59 -0700 (PDT)

--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Berlinski isn't unique or even the first to describe
> an impending Eurabia.
> As to which cities are soon to have Muslim
> majorities, Fallaci thought
> Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close.  
> 
I couldn't care less what Fallaci thinks, if she has
some actual facts to back up what she thinks I might
be interested. Judy already pointed out Amsterdam
demographics, but all you really need to know is that
Netherlands has a population of about 16 million and
less than one million Muslims to know Fallaci is
clueless.

> According to Daisy Sindelar a recently Dutch
> government study predicted that
> not only would Amsterdam and Rotterdam soon have
> Muslim majorities but also
> The Hague and Utrecht.
> 
I am not going to bother to look up the actual Dutch
study, but here is a rough guess: Some statisticans
were being silly. Let's say Amsterdam Muslim
population grew 10% one year. This could be any random
occurance, but I'd suspect change in classification.
Now annual growth of 10% leads to 17 times the
starting number over 30 years. The report most
probably mentioned that something like this is an
unrealistic assumption, and as usually happens with
qualifications in general, it was never mentioned in
the journalistic account. Or Sindelar just made up the
numbers.

In general, here is a brief and free bull-shit
detector to reporting on Europe:

- Rise of Far Right in Germany: It is worrying, but
the numbers say they got less than 5% support. Just
formulated Teemu's Law of Polls says that any
movement, including People's Movement to Eat Babies,
will have low single digit support in polls.

- Eurabia. Yes, assimilation and millitant Islamism is
a concern. But once again the numbers: there are about
450 million people living in EU and about 15 million
of them are Muslims. If for some bizarre reason all
the Muslims were classified as one nationality, they
would barely be in top ten.

- Unemployment is caused by high taxes. Nice theory in
paper and true in some cases, but in international
comparisons the nations with highest unemployment
actually have the highest taxes. But the correlation
overall is weak. Best expert on European unemployment
writing in English is Oliver Blanchard of MIT. He says
that we don't really know what causes unemployment,
but generally speaking protecting employment in
general and not particular jobs seems to help.

- European economic model. There is no such thing.
There are at least five different models inside EU:
Anglo-Saxon (Ireland), Rhineland (Germany),
Mediterrian (Italy), Nordic (Denmark), Eastern
Libertarian (Estonia).

- European social model. As in all Europeans receive
plentiful government support against hardships of life
as opposed to ruthless USA. USA despite all still has
a well-fare state, and benefits in most European
countries really are not that great. Sweden is an
exception, not the norm.

- Lack of millitary spending.  From CIA World
Factbook:
Rank Country Military expenditures - dollar figure 
Date of Information 
1 United States  $ 518,100,000,000  2005 est.  
2 China  $ 81,480,000,000  2005 est.  
3 France  $ 45,000,000,000  2005  
4 Japan  $ 44,310,000,000  2005 est.  
5 United Kingdom  $ 42,836,500,000  2003  
6 Germany  $ 35,063,000,000  2003  
7 Italy  $ 28,182,800,000  2003  
8 Korea, South  $ 21,060,000,000  2005 est.  
9 India  $ 19,040,000,000  2005 est.  
10 Saudi Arabia  $ 18,000,000,000  2002  

EU combined is something in excess of 200 billion
Euros (I estimate %2 of GDP). That ought to be enough
in peace time.

- Moralism. That people in general are lazy or violent
for example is true in some cases, unverifiable,
tautological and unhelpful.



Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland


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