Taiwan has elected Tsai Ing-wen, a childless never-married 59-year-old (Wikipedia). This is a non-traditional status for a 59-year-old person and I’m wondering how revolutionary this is. Germany, of course, is led by the childless Angela Merkel.
Readers: What other countries are led by people who never had kids? And could this affect their decision-making? (e.g., perhaps Angela Merkel isn’t worried about the long-term demographic shifts that her policies entail; by the time Germany is no longer recognizably “German,” she will be likely be dead)
Notable historical examples of childless leaders: Adolf Hitler, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh.
Arguable: George Washington (Wikipedia says that he was an active stepfather to Martha’s children).
During the outsourcing craze of 2003, there was a movement to get a software engineer in the oval office. That would have been a case of a childless president.
Julia Gillard (PM of Australia a few years ago) is childless & unmarried. Her team of spin doctors managed to portray her main opponent (a married father of 3) as an out-of-touch-with-the-public freak – quite an achievement I thought, given her personal circumstances.
You obviously realise that every childless president or prime minister (or any childless person) is creating a future with *less* competition for resources for your own kids, right? In addition, childless powerful people are less able to have their kids inherit power (King Bush I and II come to mind).
Federico: Can it be true that Angela Merkel is creating a future with less competition for resources in Germany? From the perspective of a native-born German, wouldn’t her welcoming of millions of immigrants, especially those from cultures with high fertility rates, tend to increase competition for housing, road space, water, food, etc.?
Phil, I was under the impression that the German legal system did not give Angela the power of an absolute monarch. It is Germany, not the US. Angela is no more than a figurehead in terms of deciding whether immigrants are welcome or not, the actual decision has been taken already by creating a legal and administrative system that favours (or discourages) immigration. To the best of my knowledge Angela has not instigated any changes to allow an increased refugee influx.
The good Greeks, by letting people pass through on their way to Germany without offering them asylum, nor demanding they follow European law and ask for asylum at the port of entry, have done much more in that respect.
Federico: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/angela-merkel-changes-her-stance-on-refugee-limits-a-1063773.html says that “In early September, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued an order to bring thousands of refugees who were stranded in Hungary to Germany. Germany’s basic right to asylum has no upper limits, she said.”
So it seems that Germans themselves (at least the ones who write and edit Der Spiegel) believe that Merkel has some influence over the number of immigrants.
Phil, from your link: “Establishing quotas for asylum seekers is not a solution. It also contradicts the German constitution”. Most importantly you seem to be confusing ‘letting people in to be processed by immigration’ with ‘letting people in to stay’, which is not decided by good Angela and is a legal process that is well out of her hands. I do see why journos and politicians confuse the two, I expect a slightly higher bar here.
Federico: I’m not a European so I will have to accept that you are correct. I was not under the impression that Merkel could change the law. However, based on the media reports that are available in English I was under the impression that she had some influence over the number of migrants who actually make it to Germany. E.g., she can decide how much control to exert at the country’s borders. She can decide how lucrative will be the welfare package given to arrivals, thus determining how attractive Germany will be relative to other countries. Thus she would be in control of the input to the process.
If European governments don’t have any control over how many migrants they welcome, why is there political debate over who will run the various countries? Are they only debating whether or not to change the law so that asylum is unobtainable?
Because Europeans are gullible idiots? The fact politicians debate something they cannot change by fiat, ignoring the fact they will, at best, be able to change things only after a complex political and legal process that will involve the whole parliament and possibly supranational agreements, is for the votes. Don’t politicians in the US of A debate the second? can the walk in and change it? my point exactly.
Federico: I think that the U.S. president has at least some influence over the level of illegal immigration. As Commander in Chief, for example, the president could instruct the military to assist the regular border patrol (see https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R41286.pdf for “On May 25, 2010, President Obama announced that up to 1,200 National Guard
troops would be sent to the border to support the Border Patrol.”; the article also indicates that government lawyers will get paid to argue about the precise scope of this assistance). The U.S. president also can decide whether or not to deport someone. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-immigrant-deportation-policy_us_55b139d4e4b0a9b948540dae (“Under Obama’s New Policies, 87 Percent of Undocumented Immigrants Won’t Be Targeted For Deportation”). The article implies that the president has discretion regarding whether or not to deport at least 5 million people currently in the U.S. illegally.
Geun-hye Park, current President of South Korea, is just doing fine…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Geun-hye
Jay: That’s fascinating. It seems that the most successful economies tend to led by childless women!
Phil: It may not be obvious to readers (and writers) of this blog, but not every woman on this planet has having kids, so they can then collect money from the fathers, as one of the main goals in life
Thanks, Elisa. Having a kid for cash would be an especially bad plan in Angela Merkel’s Germany where child support is capped at $6,000 per year! (see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/International ; Maybe this is partially due to Angela Merkel, though; as a childless person herself she would be jealous if a child support profiteer out-earned her simply through obtaining custody of a child. Germany shut down a very profitable alimony trade in 2009, four years after Merkel became Chancellor.)
They have had falling birthrates in Germany for quite some time. It was argued that Merkel’s policy is a way to make up for a decrease in headcount. Since the new year this argument doesn’t cut it, as the CDU party is a conservative party that is supposed to stand for internal security.