"Do we want to replace ourselves or do we want to shrink and get older and be replaced by migrants and work permit holders? That's the simple question."

That is the very question that Australia - and indeed, the entire Western world - faces. For while the globe's population is exploding, the European and European-descended peoples of the West are in demographic decline. In fact, not a single Western country has a birth rate that will enable it to replace its present population.

Some have suggested immigration as the solution to the West's aging population woes. Australian policymakers certainly seem to think that increased immigration can be used as a way to offset our aging population. However, the problem with immigration is that it doesn't replenish a country's population - it replaces it. It is not population maintenance, but rather the suicide and disappearance of a particular nation and its replacement by foreign nations.

Reminds me of the words of Arnold J. Toynbee: "Civilisations die from suicide, not by murder."

Drab,
You'll notice that the people who promote the genocide of White nations think it's all a big joke while the people who oppose mass Third World immigration into White countries take it very seriously.
Multinational societies don't work, India has multiple low level internal ethnic conflicts and great social unrest, so too Syria, Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan the Balkan countries and
we're already seeing sectarian and racial conflict in Western Sydney.
Every race or ethnic group has it's strengths and weaknesses, using guilt over fictional "Racism" and emotional pressure about "Ageing Populations" on White people is like forcing alchohol on Aboriginals, some of them can't handle it and go off the deep end, dragging the rest of the community down with them.
White people don't want to take action to deal with the problem because these errant folk are family but at some point, just like every other ethnic group we will have to put group survival ahead of the needs of a toxic minority within our ranks.

Jay, you may find this article by Patrick Buchanan interesting:

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2008/05/01/the-way-our-world-end/

"In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent.

More arresting is that the white population is shrinking not only in relative but in real terms. Two hundred million white people, one in every six on earth—a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany—will vanish by 2060.

The European race is going the way of the Mohicans.

...

Hopefully, the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, who are about to inherit the earth as we pass away, will treat us better than our ancestors treated them in the five centuries that Western Man ruled the world.

Otherwise, we all go out with a bang."

Drab,
Yet we have no country of our own, not one, the Japanese have a country of their own, the Iranians have their own country, our toxic Anglo Saxon government sends men to kick the Pakistani Taliban out of Afghanistan at the same time as they "enrich" our countries with Pakistanis and Afghans.

The article on Sub-Saharan Africa gives a different slant on population growth.
" 15 of the 20 countries with the highest total fertility rates are to be found in the region. With an average of 4.9 children per woman the sub-Saharan African population is exploding. Increased numbers could wipe out economic gains"

If the world is going to survive, we must not accept 10 billion rising as the population goal.
We are one world, not nations outbreeding each other, or families which are 'generous' if they are large.

Thanks for reminding me, Ludwig. I had meant to respond, but got distracted.

>>...the place is overcrowded now, so how can it be expected to maintain its great standard of living, and keep the gap between the rich and poor reasonably small if it is to continue packing em in, with no end in sight?<<

My understanding is that the "extinction" that Mr Lee is concerned about is that of home-grown Singaporeans - code for "people like me" - not the nation-state itself. This is his real concern, and these are the words he uses to describe that concern:

"...this place will fold up, because there'll be no original citizens left to form the majority, and we cannot have new citizens, new PRs to settle our social ethos, our social spirit, our social norms."

I don't believe that the intent is to "keep packing them in". The warning he sounds is that Singaporeans should work to re-balance the population statistics in favour of "people-like-Mr Lee".

There are already enough economic dis-incentives to overcrowding, and it is these that will keep the overall population numbers under control. Unless, of course, the population is allowed to decline, in which case the disintegration could easily set in, very quickly. Those sufficiently well off will take their business elsewhere - China, possibly, or Australia - and the economy will begin to stagnate. Once that occurs, all the social safeguards will fail, one after the other, until the country reverts to its pre-Lee situation.

If, however, the economy continues to thrive, their only "problem" will be the one that Mr Lee perceives. The population will not grow in any unsustainable fashion, but the "ethnic mix" will change. That's all.