China

From 1960 to 1962, just two short years, 30 million people died of starvation in Mao's China, the worst famine in recorded history. Fast forward to 1979 and China was once again facing the problem of too many people and not enough food. In the early 1970's the government could foresee this problem and started a program called Long, Last and Few which said the women should get married later and have longer times between children. It was successful as fertility rates declined from 5.7 in 1969 to 2.7 in 1978 but it was not enough. So in 1980 China started the one child policy. If you followed the policy the government would pay for your child's college and offer you interest free loans. For those who did not follow the policy the government used forced sterilization and abortion. By 2015 the fertility rate dropped to 1.6 and the plan was working. This led to two undesirable results. First there are far too few young people to support far too many old people and second there are too many men and too few women since male babies were preferred over female babies. The lesson here is that communist countries give too much power to the government and the government seems to not understand the old adage, the unintended consequences of good intentions. It is hard to understand that the government did not realize what such policies would bring. China today is in dire straights for a number of reasons, not the least of which, is demographic. This is mindful of Reagan's warning statement, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’