{"id":13760,"date":"2012-04-13T13:43:24","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T17:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13760"},"modified":"2012-04-13T13:43:24","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T17:43:24","slug":"how-demographics-affect-defense-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13760\/how-demographics-affect-defense-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"How Demographics Affect Defense Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2012\/04\/12\/demographic-trends-are-poised-to-spoil-beijings-plans-for-a-chinese-century-says-author\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Daily Caller<\/a> profiles a new book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1597975508\/thedaical-20\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics<\/em><\/a>, that explains why aging and shrinking populations in China, Japan, and Europe will dramatically alter American foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the book\u2019s findings are startling:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By the end of this decade India will surpass China as the most populous nation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Japan will lose 1 million people a year by 2060, contracting from 127 million to less than 87 million.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Europe\u2019s expensive social welfare model and aging populations will increasingly spur governments to scale back military spending in order to fund burgeoning entitlement program.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Even though America\u2019s current rate of replacing itself gives it a demographic advantage, unless serious reforms are instituted to entitlement spending, it too will continue to cut military expenditures to pay for rapidly expanding benefits for the elderly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>India surpassing China means that democracy \u2013 not a communist-controlled autocracy \u2013 will be the government adopted by the most populous country on Earth.\u00a0 It may also encourage the United States and India to forge a closer strategic partnership around shared values to check China\u2019s ambitions.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, we\u2019ve already seen how the European model of heavy on services, light on defense is making the region \u2013 though not a few individual countries \u2013 increasingly irrelevant when it comes to making the world safe.<\/p>\n<p>In his budgets, President Barack Obama has chosen to increase spending on entitlements and gut defense, arguing like a European that multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and NATO can accomplish more than any one nation.<\/p>\n<p>Paul Ryan highlighted this danger in his latest budget proposal, <a href=\"http:\/\/paulryan.house.gov\/Issues\/Issue\/?IssueID=56750\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal<\/a>.&#8221;\u00a0 In it, he faults President Obama for cutting $500 billion from the Defense Department instead of making the changes needed to entitlements so that Americans can be protected both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n<p>Americans need not accept decline through badly prioritized budgets.\u00a0 Instead, using innovative entitlement reforms like the ones in Ryan\u2019s Path to Prosperity, we can have sustainable entitlement programs and a robust defense.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve got the people.\u00a0 Now we need to implement the right policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Daily Caller profiles a new book, Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics, that explains why aging and shrinking populations in China, Japan, and Europe will dramatically alter American foreign policy. Some of the book\u2019s findings are startling: By the end of this decade India will surpass China as the most populous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,135,2526,95,590,2076,1300,802,1447,61],"class_list":["post-13760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-china","tag-defense","tag-entitlements","tag-europe","tag-india","tag-japan","tag-paul-ryan","tag-reform","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13760"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13765,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13760\/revisions\/13765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}