One of the things I really hate are unqualified linear projections. They’re so useless most of the time. A science fiction magazine will give you more insight about the future than the United Nations population projection for the year 2100. This is just as much of an issue when it comes to American Census demographic projections. As I’ve noted before population projections of the coming non-Hispanic white minority 2040 to 2050 are sensitive to the assumptions behind the basic parameters. The logic of the projection is crystal clear and airtight, but just because a certain set of assumptions holds today, does not mean that those assumptions will hold indefinitely (though the Census projections are much more plausible than the United Nations projections because two generations are so much more strongly impacted by by the inertia of current conditions that four generations). In the 18th and 19th century white Americans, and especially the Anglo-Saxon founding stock, were a highly fertile folk. They took over the American Southwest and the Northwest in large part due to their demographic assault. In New England the 30,000 of 1650 became the 700,000 in 1790 in large part due to fertility rates on the order of ...