“I’ve been doing a little reading this morning about the Greek crisis and related problems in Europe. One take, and it makes sense to me, is that many European countries have such low fertility rates that even with some degree of immigration, they simply will not have the future population levels necessary to pay for their current deficit spending without extraordinary levels of taxation. If each generation produces fewer children than it numbers, you have an inverted family tree and a crushing level of debt on future generations. This requires the sorts of austerity measures being proposed in Greece and elsewhere now, lest the whole game collapse.” Read more.