Almost like a rabidly anti-sex society resulting in people having significantly less sex than at any point historically known might have some sort of negative consequences, huh? I'm sure the rampant depression, anxiety, and other things known to be a consequence of reduced sexual activity are all caused by something else though. The fact you could start up the Youth Anti-Sex League from Orwell's 1984 and no one would even bat an eye is probably just a fluke. Carry on.
US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
251–260 of 434 posts
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time agriculture-heavy states crack down on illegal immigration, crops rot on the vine because nobody else wants those jobs, even in periods of high unemployment. Here's the story from Georgia, there are identical ones from the Southwest as well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-06/crops-rot... . Your choice is not between illegal im…
Sometimes "nobody doing it" is the correct answer. It might not be economically viable for the USA to grow strawberries. We can import strawberries or find something else to eat. In the long-term, automation may help. We can also pay a tiny bit more for our strawberries. At retail level, the cost of farm labor is is tiny portion of the total cost. Crops don't rot on the vine if farmers know the labor situation in adv…
> Sometimes "nobody doing it" is the correct answer. It might not be economically viable for the USA to grow strawberries. We can import strawberries or find something else to eat.
I actually agree with this, but society has decided that "food security" is an important component of national security and that the country would like to maintain domestic food production even if it is uneconomical. And that's fine, if that's what the public wants, but once you do that you have to live with the consequences, like being forced to choose between illegal labor and rotting crops.
> In the long-term, automation may help.
Maybe, but a lot of the produce-picking that can be automated already has been. What's left is crops that, for whatever reason, are much harder to automate.
> At retail level, the cost of farm labor is is tiny portion of the total cost.
I'd like to see a source for this.
> Crops don't rot on the vine if farmers know the labor situation in advance
Please actually read my two links. The first is from 2012, and the second is about how the situation persisted through 2016. You're saying four years of Georgia's law wasn't enough advance notice?
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#253For decades, the US birth rate has been held up by immigration. American values have been to regard the country as a nation of immigrants, who not only act as a source of youthful workers, but also have more kids than Americans who have been here longer. So the US has avoided workforce aging, as has happened in parts of Europe and especially Japan, through immigration. With the recent reduction in immigration, accele…
> one party wants to make it hard for two-parent working families to have more kids
Wait what? Are we talking child credits, abortion, progressive income taxes, mortgage tax credit?
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
"not being aware contraception exists even if you went to school" haha
"going to school but not paying attention because you work two jobs and take care of your siblings"
"going to school and paying attention but being taught that abstinence is the only effective form of birth control and that condoms fail regularly so why bother" All so parents don't have to deal with the horror-movie scenario of their adolescent kids having a responsible, happy sex life.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going from expensive area with good job market to slightly less expensive area with little to no job market. Rrright.
A version of your comment is posted in response to every suggestion that somebody leave expensive coastal areas. One wonders what the heck you think is going on in the rest of the country. There are jobs in other cities. The idea that there is "little or no job market" outside of NYC and San Francisco is -- I'm sorry, there's no other way to say it -- absurd . The fact that you forward this claim with such smugness -…
There's "jobs" in all those places, but not necessarily jobs the OP can do. I lived in the NYC area for a short time, and the job market there for my specialty and experience was terrible. Here in the DC area, it's excellent. Places like Indianapolis, Nashville, etc., would also likely be terrible for me. Certain industries and specialties are concentrated mainly in certain areas, so if you're specialized, you have to stick to those places.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#256Interesting... How many people here would say that they have actively decided not to have children? I am just curious.
Decided actively I don't want children at around age 30. Married, and currently seek a vasectomy so my wife doesn't have to be on birth control and I never have to worry about having a child ever again.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, a fact is that illegal immigrants are willing to work for dirt-cheap which subsidizes our produce price. :) https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-an-immigrat...
Cheap produce is awesome. :) But working people not being able to find jobs because they're competing with dirt-cheap no-benefit laborers is not. :(
In many states the employment market is so tight that jobs are going unfilled. This is especially true in blue-collar jobs that require interfacing with computers and advanced machinery. In many areas with higher unemployment rate, employers still complain they can't find anyone who can pass a drug test.
We do have a mismatch -- lots of employers simply aren't yet paying enough to get employees. And agricultural employers can't get any Americans, white or not white, to work for them, in part because the seasonality of the jobs and lack of health insurance makes the pay immaterial. If you work for 6 weeks you could lose eligibility for some benefits, and what are you going to do for the other 46 weeks in the year? Providing benefits not tied to employment would mitigate this problem. But it still wouldn't solve the problem of all the Americans not even looking for work because they're out on disability. These people, again, are not competing with immigrant labor, because by and large they really can't do any sort of physical labor.
There is really no competition for ag jobs. Americans really, really don't want to do them, for some rational economic reasons and some reasons of expectations/feelings about what they deserve.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
A version of your comment is posted in response to every suggestion that somebody leave expensive coastal areas. One wonders what the heck you think is going on in the rest of the country. There are jobs in other cities. The idea that there is "little or no job market" outside of NYC and San Francisco is -- I'm sorry, there's no other way to say it -- absurd . The fact that you forward this claim with such smugness -…
There's "jobs" in all those places, but not necessarily jobs the OP can do. I lived in the NYC area for a short time, and the job market there for my specialty and experience was terrible. Here in the DC area, it's excellent. Places like Indianapolis, Nashville, etc., would also likely be terrible for me. Certain industries and specialties are concentrated mainly in certain areas, so if you're specialized, you have t…
Yes, of course. If you're a deep sea fisherman, it's trivially provable that you can't do that job in Nebraska :)
But that's never what these guys mean.
It's always casually advanced as a blanket statement about the hopelessness of living somewhere that you can't smell the ocean. I don't know why it became popular to demonstrate such obvious ignorance about the job markets of inland cities, but here we are.
I, for example, know precisely nothing about the job market in, say, Salt Lake City, but that's why I don't make statements on the internet about the job market in Salt Lake City.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Immigrants to the US have the same level of college completion as natives: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/03/key-findings...
Illegal immigrants usually do not (under the table, off the books unskilled labor), and are in the US in large numbers (millions). Not a sleight, just facts.
Not all immigrants are undocumented (what you call illegal).
The current US policy by this administration is causing even documented immigrants to reconsider or just give up and leave.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. If the pay is right, you will find plenty of people to pick produce. But in a world where people expect $15/hour for work that is leisurely in comparison (fast food), paying that much for hard labor ain’t gonna cut it.
> Bullshit. I provided sources showing that this is, empirically, what happens, no matter what you would like to believe. > If the pay is right, you will find plenty of people to pick produce. Obviously! But once you do that, the produce costs so much that no one wants to buy it. That is the fundamental issue here.
> I provided sources showing that this is, empirically, what happens, no matter what you would like to believe.
I can’t read the second one, but I’ve seen the arguments in the first one a million times — a whole lot of whining about how it’s absolutely impossible to find workers. No, you can’t find them at the price you want. Show me the farmer offering $30/hour plus benefits. You can’t. Even in the first article they peg “skilled” labor at $15-20/hour with the unskilled earning less. Guess what, I can get that a McDonald’s so try harder Mr. Farmer.
> Obviously! But once you do that, the produce costs so much that no one wants to buy it.
So I take it you were against the recent ~doubling of fast food wages in some localities to $15/hour then? Nah, probably not, I’m guessing you used the same argument so many others did: “what’s your problem, it’ll add like three cents to the cost of your Big Mac.” Well, I’d argue that doubling or tripling farm labor costs would only add a dime to the price of a basket of strawberries. Who cares? Pay real wages for real work and stop making excuses for what amounts to modern day slave labor.