Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!reader5.news.weretis.net!news.solani.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Aidan Kehoe Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,alt.usage.english Subject: Re: OT: US administration "yes people" Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:04:25 +0000 Message-ID: <87v7emy74m.fsf@parhasard.net> References: <10pa1dv$2d5dl$6@dont-email.me> <10pa6el$2f963$2@dont-email.me> <5PGcnQm5n5eAYiX0nZ2dnZfqnPWdnZ2d@giganews.com> <10pb5r2$2obtv$13@dont-email.me> <4luo8mxm8o.ln2@Telcontar.valinor> <10pd71s$3grlr$1@dont-email.me> <1rs7tbh.gpe5481mficwpN%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl> <10pgt0i$mdso$7@dont-email.me> <6slv8mxh47.ln2@Telcontar.valinor> <1rs9smu.jbxbeu1db40cvN%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl> <1rsbpkc.vc5k1918vdagaN%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl> <10pn28v$2pchc$2@dont-email.me> <878qbkz2t8.fsf@parhasard.net> <10ppou3$3l4me$3@dont-email.me> <874im7zdim.fsf@parhasard.net> <10ppu2s$3mv6i$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: solani.org; logging-data="448213"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@news.solani.org" User-Agent: Gnus/5.101 (Gnus v5.10.10) XEmacs/21.5-b36 (Linux-aarch64) Cancel-Lock: sha1:kPsFZHELZjzf+vFyq28nss0kpy8= sha1:VfWSgyj241nnpb23NLLvdmgfgsE= X-User-ID: eJwFwQkBwDAIA0BLhCcwOUBb/xJ2F0Zw0xn0ePEuIK4lHMVa3RUWOK4nJms/lLcOuiGnxfIHAecQTQ== Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:83802 alt.usage.english:1140512 Ar an tríú lá is fiche de mí Márta, scríobh Peter Moylan: > On 23/03/26 09:48, Aidan Kehoe wrote: > > > Ireland specifically is a much smaller proportion of the world > > population than it was in 1847, and, a historical anomaly, we’ve had > > a few relatively good decades. Not as good as Australia, the 2008 > > crash was very painful, but (the republic of) Ireland in 1986 had an > > unemployment rate of 17% and a government debt to GDP ratio of 131%. > > The corresponding figures today are 4.6% and 38.77%. And our birth > > rate has cratered. > > I've not seen this mentioned, but I suspect that one of the things that > saved the Irish economy was a decline in influence of the Catholic church. > > This also happened in the countries to which the Irish migrated, In > Australia, when I was a child, the Catholic church was initially > powerful because of the large number of Irish in the country. In time, > though, people came to decide that the policies the bishops were pushing > were reactionary and unacceptable. An even bigger factor in my lifetime > was the role of the Catholic schools. In the long run the major product > of the convent schools was a large supply of ex-Catholics. By now at > least a third of Australia, according to census data, is non-religious. > Islam is growing, a little, but Christianity is in decline. Max Weber was right, much as it irritates people of Catholic background when we encounter his arguments for the first time. Now, that said, the Catholic Church has a demonstrated interest in very long-term persistence +/- growth of itself, something not true of democratic governments (where decisions that have an impact beyond a couple of election cycles make very little difference to individual politicians’ careers) nor couples (where, we want to see our children grow up healthy and successful, and part of that is (for me at least) grandchildren; but I can’t do much, absent becoming a billionaire, for my great-great-grandchildren). A nation probably should have similar priorities. I was just listening to a Deutschlandfunk broadcast, https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bevoelkerungsrueckgang-wie-griechenland-fuer-mehr-geburten-sorgen-will-100.html on Greece’s demographic problems. As a country that is not attractive for immigration, with more deaths than births (roughly 60,000 births last year, in a country of 10 million people), their population is going down and they are attempting to do things to slow that. This struck me because circa 60,000 teenagers sat the Leaving Certificate in Ireland, the school exit exams that determine access to university, the year I did, when the country’s population was 3.7 million. -- ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out / How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’ (C. Moore)