criminalizing youth

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Interesting how 'demographic'  theories can come back into vogue as
fundamental explanations for various social phenomena.  Just
brainstorming, One thinks of declining  population growth as an effective
cause of secular stagnation as theorized by  Alvin Hansen, America's then
leading Keynesian; a greying population as the future cause of the
bankruptcy of the social security system (all the more politically
explosive according to David Hayes Bautista because the elderly will be
disproportionately white while those paying into social security will be
disprop. minorities, esp Latinos); differential reproduction and the
declining quality and intelligence of the population (or attentuations in
the former leading to reductions in  crime rates, as claimed by Barro
whose own positive contribution of 'Ricardian equivalence' btw seems
patently absurd and at the very least empirically unsubstantiated). The
last theory of course has never been able to make sense of the Flynn
effect--the successive improvement in mean IQ over the last few
generations despite the continuing relatively greater fecundity of the
poor and the working class (at any rate, such substantial improvement of
almost one standard deviation--I believe--per generation cannot be
explained by the genetic 'improvement' of the species over the last 50
years). Theories of secular stagnation seem to have died in the post war
boom, which  was not commenced by a resumption of population growth.  
Of course the person who investigated the state science of demography as a
technology of bio power was Foucault. For example, one could investigate
today the connections between natalist projects and the tax system in
contemporary Europe (especially France perhaps). Krugman has also
speculated that the reluctance of the Japanese govt to adopt his cranky  
money creation schemes stems from the growing political power of an older
population in fear of its pensions being inflated away--that is, the
explanation for the political failure to even try the Keynesian panacea is
fundamentally 'demographic'. 

 Yours, Rakesh