By: Bruce Jones

Bruce Jones — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 05:01:22 +0000

The notion of increasing immigration to fudge the govt statistics is an old one.
People are a wake-up to this.
They know, as many other countries now know, that increase in taxes leaves less for the wage-earner.
With less to spend, the obvious solution is to cut back on what costs. Cutting back means fewer children.
This has been going on for a long time.
Australians with their Commonwealth bank were able to set up family building much more easily with low-interest loans
that resulted in unskilled workers owning their own homes, and family stability was assured. Families were able to cling.
That all changed when Dennison Millar died, and the privatisation of the Commonwealth bank occurred. Yet with this bank
Australia was able to pay out its war debt so that at the end of WWI Australia finished without a war debt.
The UK has only recently paid out its war debt.
Europe is now going through a major crisis. A birthrate of 1.29 (Italy) means that in four generations there will be 17%
of its current population.
Remarkable in the middle ages, families of fourteen children were not uncommon, as fathers were employed for less than half the year,
and then were able to spend the rest of their time building magnificent cathedrals, like Notre Dame. It does not seem to happen today.
Someone pointed out the surprising number of taxes involved in just producing a loaf of bread- for that country- over fifty.
By making the effort to cut down taxes, and passing on the benefits to the wage-earners, the parents are more likely to have a reasonable
sized family. It makes sense to encourage youth. Catholics in parishes can do lots to make this happen, as well as in homes of parents
whose offspring are becoming marriageable.
Lump-sum benefits can be helpful to parents struggling with hospital expenses, and the same can be supplied to Catholic schools.
This would have long term achievements in larger families, and more children would mean raising the consciousness of the public
towards the most fundamental need: rearing a family.
Catholics need to face this important issue squarely.

Comments on: Concern at NZ fertility trend down

By: Bruce Jones