The Venus Of Willendorf Graph

 Angela Merkel

source: Getty / Politico


German PM Angela Merkel has harshly criticized Eastern European governments for their meager response to the migration crisis:

Politico
Merkel slams eastern Europeans on migration
Chancellor makes emotional plea in closed-door meeting.
By  Florian Eder and Maïa de La Baume
10/7/15, 3:53 PM CET Updated 10/9/15, 7:35 AM CET
http://www.politico.eu/article/merkel-eu-needs-to-consider-treaty-change/

STRASBOURG — German Chancellor Angela Merkel harshly criticized eastern European governments for not having learned from their own history in their responses to the migration crisis.

“The eastern Europeans — and I’m counting myself as an eastern European — we have experienced that isolation doesn’t help,” she told members of the center-right European People’s Party Wednesday in a closed-door meeting, according to a recording of the session that POLITICO obtained from one group member.

“It makes me a bit sad that precisely those who can consider themselves lucky that they have lived to see the end of the Cold War, now think that one can completely stay out of certain developments of globalization,” Merkel said, referring to the reluctance of some EU countries to accept refugees...

One area not touched is a demographic fact which affects Germany and all of the developed world; i.e., the fact that the older portion of the population is growing while the younger workforce is diminishing, thereby creating a situation where fewer workers need to support benefits for those no longer working.

This imbalance in age distribution, when viewed as a graph, creates a profile which I refer to as  The Venus of Willendorf  age distribution.

For example, in 2015 the Germany age distribution pyramid graph:

and as the bulges in the middle move upwards as the population ages, fewer workers are supporting more and more people.


This is The Venus of Willendorf Demographic Trap, based on the resemblance to the Neolithic staue of the same name:

Venus of Willendorf

and we see the narrow base (which represents the young), the middle bulge of the hips (which represent the work force), and then the other bulges of the breast higher up (which represent the retired group, interestingly enough).

One of the uses of Immigration that we forget - and perhaps we were never aware of - is the fact that the immigrants tend to be workers looking for work and they bring their families and children.

Thus, Immigration can usefully add to the workforce and tend to correct the imbalance as seen in the Venus of Willendorf Demographic Trap.

One of the easiest ways to address Social Security problems is to increase the Social Security paying workforce by immigration.

Of course, we do not talk about this; we talk about (a) building walls and forbidding entry, and (b) putting old folks on ice floes and giving them a push.... or giving their boats old, used and worn dimity sails, enough to get them wheezily floating to their Arthur Gordon Pym-dystopian future!

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