There are financial difficulties but they can be worked on.

Eating your seed corn is not a great idea.

Fancier folks, who want to say “my son/daughter the doctor” can purchase chlidren at medical graduations, but that is the high end, naturally.

Some researchers are addressing the problem even more directly. By simply not dying, ever, we can completely dispense with that old fashioned thing our parents used to do, childbirth, midnight feedings, all that stuff.

Down with death. It’s the modern way.

SARC TAG

The figures are contained in reports issued in July by two Israeli government agencies. One, released by the army’s manpower division, simply states the proportions of conscripts and exemptees. According to the report, just under 24% of all 18-year-olds will be exempted from the draft this coming fall. Of those, 11% — close to half — will be excused because of Torah studies. The rest will be divided roughly evenly among Israelis living abroad, those with criminal records, medical deferments and those found “psychologically unfit” — by health or inclination — for military service.

Nonreligious exemptions have declined in recent years, but Torah exemptions have soared. The main reason is fertility: The Haredi community averages 7.6 children per woman, roughly triple the rate for the population as a whole, according to the Israel government’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

The demographic trend is demonstrated plainly in another report, prepared by the statistics bureau for the Ministry of Education. The report shows enrollment figures in Israel’s three separate Jewish school systems, the state-secular, state-religious (Modern Orthodox) and Haredi streams. In the 15 years from 1992 to 2007, the proportion of Jewish children attending state-secular elementary schools dropped to 55% of the total from 67%; in 2012 it is projected to fall to 51%. The percentage attending Haredi schools, meanwhile, went from 12.4% in 1992 to 26.7% in 2007 and a projected 31% in 2012. Modern Orthodox schools (whose graduates do perform military service) remain steady throughout at roughly 18%.

At some point in the late 2020s, if current trends continue, the percentage of Israeli Jews claiming army exemption due to Torah study will pass the 30% mark and continue climbing.

These figures don’t include the schools of Israel’s Arab community, which is almost entirely exempt from military service. The Israeli Arab birthrate is climbing, as well, although nowhere near the pace of Haredi increase.

Factoring in the Arab schools, Israel’s elementary-school population in 2012 will look like this: 41.7% state-secular, 13.5% state-religious, 17.4% Haredi and 27.4% Arab. Unless something changes drastically, Israel’s military draft pool will fall below 50% of draft-age youth by the year 2030 or soon after.

forward.com/ar...

Please note that about 40% of otherwise eligible non-Haredi men do not serve in the Army either. Don’t blame it all on the Haredim. We all read the casualty reports from the last war – hardly any Tel Avivians. Just suckers like new immigrants and moshavnikim. Israel is suffering from a malaise that has little to do with the Haredim and more to do with a new generation of snot nosed self-entitled narcissists and the shit head parents that raised them. Israel is losing it’s sense of purpose. This is our real challenge.