National Dilemmas

  Photograph: Sombo Sombo/Alamy

National Dilemmas

In poverty-stricken countries of the world
which we may no longer refer to as Third World 
countries but rather make full use of the 
euphemism 'emerging economies', there is one 
inexhaustible natural resource the envy of 
First World economic nations; the growth
steady and reliable, of their populations where 
the natural increase grows and grows despite 
privation, food scarcity, joblessness and lack 
of medical care and the unfortunate loss of life 
accompanying those lacks. In those countries 
governed either by incompetents or a hierarchy 
of privileged elites for whom nothing of concrete
value lacks, the great unwashed for whom 
sanitation, potable water, basic foodstuffs, power
and health care remain beyond imagination it's 
live or perish as fortune rolls her die, and  hope 
is lost. Yet wealthy nations grapple with their
confounding statistics that emphasize population 
replacement expectations remain mysteriously 
misplaced for as the aged die, fewer are born to 
replace them. This, even as administrations enact
legislation and expend treasury to enhance
the prospect of child-bearing, offering measures
inconceivable to those others, even while
residents of wealthy nations sneer at their
subsidies, the child care provisions, the health
care, the paid parental leave, as insufficient
in depth and quantity as a persuasive gambit.