Donald Trump’s alleged description of Africa, El Salvador and Haiti as “shitholes” predictably led to global fury and accusations of racism.
Trump would be well advised to refrain from such comments since they merely damage his standing and thus his power to get things done, but as usual, the resulting anger spectacularly misses the point.
Much of the critique was highly illogical, such as the argument that America imported vast numbers of black slaves. True, but so what?
Africa is the poorest continent, but its population will rise from around 1.273 billion in early 2018 to ± 2.5 billion in 2050 – in an era when countries can no longer get rich by industrialising and when jobs will increasingly disappear in all countries due to IT and robotisation.
We forecast that Africa’s problems will get far, far worse unless it can curb its population growth sharply and/or create massive numbers of jobs every year for the next decades.
“Progressives” believe that immigration to the advanced democracies is the solution, but they are wrong.
The solution is to find ways to increase the wealth and health of the rest of the world in a sustainable fashion without further destabilising or even destroying the West by mass immigration in the process.
Few people are even thinking in these terms.