Somalia, a counter example:
I suppose there is grounds to think of Somalia as being one of the worst places to live on earth.  (Don’t Aim too high ECONOMIST vol. 401 no. 8755 October 15, 2011 page 18 and Hope is Four-legged and Woolly page 53 of the same issue.)

I am generally carrying on about how if you don’t have babies you don’t have an economy or anything else, including a future.  But it does not follow that if you do have babies that everything is going to be just fine.  The birth rate in Somalia is said to be 6.3 per woman as of two years ago.  Well that is certainly high enough.  Of course it was in decline, but rather slowly as such things go.  But all is not well in Somalia.

Everybody knows that there have been drought, famine and piracy.  That it is a failed state.  And it doesn’t have to be that way.  Last year they sold $250 million worth of animals on the international market.  And that was just in the seven weeks before Haj, the Muslim pilgrimage.  That’s a busy season but not the only time they sold animals.  That’s not bad for a country that numbered 6 million in 1975.  I’m sure the current number is greater, but evidently statistics are hard to come by in that troubled land. 

And things could get better.  Indeed the south, where the troubles abound, was once the breadbasket of the country.  There are many places where investment would return handsomely in terms of increased productivity of the land. 

And I suspect things will indeed get better.  Regimes change.  Even a dark age can be considered a regime.  These terrible times will end for Somalia.  The economy will continue to grow.  It is hard to imagine what kind of political setup will follow the present condition, but it is rather hard to imagine things getting much worse in the foreseeable. 

So yes it is true that babies do not always solve all your problems.  But babies grow us.  Babies are the only thing that every solve problems.

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