Daniel Hannan
The Telegraph [UK]
7/11/2014
One of this blog’s constant themes is that Britain is shackled to a corpse: the EU is the only trade bloc on the planet that is not growing economically.
It’s important to understand that this decline is not a temporary blip. Although the euro crisis has accelerated Europe’s slide, the underlying problem is demographic. Put simply, fewer and fewer youngsters are supporting more and more retirees. Europe’s working age population peaked in 2012 at 308 million, and will fall to 265 million by 2060. The ratio of pensioners to workers will, according to The Economist, rise from 28 per cent to 58 per cent – and even these statistics assume the arrival of a million immigrants every year.
However, as Emmanuel Todd explains (in English) in the clip above, these figures gloss over the variations within the EU…
…take a couple of minutes to listen to Todd’s eminently reasonable analysis. And then try to tell me that we should stay in the EU.
The comple article, with the video, is at The Telegraph.
