US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level • Hacker News Board

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#281

Post by sp527 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #204

sp527 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if there's a dip around the upper middle/lower upper who, because of price discrimination on college costs and such must still be conservative, that then reverses course for the mid to upper upper, who have wealth in excess of any reasonable pattern of consumption and certainly more than enough to raise many children. I know that my plan is two max at the moment strictly because total cost per head i…

People who have a lot of money have a lot more fun entertaining themselves without leaning on the emotional network of a family. People with less money rely on their family and community for entertainment. So I'd expect wealthy "jet setters" to not have many children.

Legacy is terrifically important to many wealthy people. Many are in fact motivated towards wealth and success because of it.

Depending on how you define it, children are actually a much more reliable way to have a reasonably enduring legacy than businesses/foundations/accomplishments/fame/etc, though both approaches are ultimately ephemeral. You probably have to successfully make it at least three levels down an ancestor tree, rooted at yourself and with an average replacement rate around 2, in order for your own genetic legacy to have a high statistical likelihood of enduring through anything short of a species-level catastrophe.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#282

Post by cjbprime » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

tzahola wrote: post #123

avip wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retirement ponzi structure won't hold.

And the masses of childless elders will happily vote into office anyone who promises to take care of them.

I wonder why this isn't causing a swing to the Dems in the US already. Republicans admit disliking both immigrants and entitlements.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#283

Post by Analemma_ » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #260

Analemma_ wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

We are drifting away from my original claim here, into new claims where I actually mostly agree with you. The original claim was "Illegal immigration hurts low-skilled American workers", and I responded saying "No it doesn't, because those immigrants are taking jobs that wouldn't otherwise be filled, at least in the produce market that presently exists".

Whether people should be willing to may more for their produce, and whether the treatment of these workers is ethically defensible - those are separate questions. I would be totally fine with paying real wages for produce-picking and then subsequently tightening immigration, but there's the paying market we'd like to have and the one we've actually got.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#284

Post by kaitai » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #216

dagw wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grandma is either still working or far too busy living her own healthy and active life to want to be an unpaid full time nanny.

Why would she be unpaid, and why isn't family part of an active life, and why is grandma so much wealthier than her children?

Because Grandma had her mom watch her kids so didn't spend $14,400/year on infant care, and her mom had time because she got fired from her school teacher job the day she got married!

Today's mom, on the other hand, moved to San Francisco to get her data scientist/devops/whatever job (there were not any in her area of northern Minnesota and she kind of liked CA after going to Stanford) and Grandma doesn't want to move to CA because it's going to fall into the ocean, you know.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#285

Post by skissane » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #250

magduf wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese immigrants were not (and still are not) particularly religious, and certainly didn't have a religion that promoted extremism and placed them at odds with the existing inhabitants. Other Asian immigrants in the US were also either not religious, or (like with Koreans and Filipinos) adopted the same religion as the dominant culture. The fundamental problem, as I see it, is religion.

> and certainly didn't have a religion that promoted extremism Lets cut through the code words then and have a direct counterexample to what you're trying to say. Nigerians are primarily Muslims. They are also highly educated and among the most entrepreneurial immigrants to the USA. And while there's a "Nigerian prince" joke every now and then, they really are doing relatively well in the USA. Like, "better than Asia…

> Nigerians are primarily Muslims.

Nigeria is split close to 50-50 between Muslims and Christians. The north is majority Muslim, the south is majority Christian.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#286

Post by rayiner » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #83

loggedinmyphone wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe did the same in importing large numbers of Muslim laborers after WW2. The hope was that they'd either make their money and go back home, or culturally integrate. Many observers will say that neither happened and there's now a difficult social problem in many countries like France.

America integrated large immigrant waves in it's past, and I doubt anyone would say the Italians, or Irish, or other minorities were not integrated today. Time bridges cultures, and we're the better for it.

That was back when there was a broad social concensus in favor of integration. Both sides of the political spectrum have destroyed that (the right through nativism and the left through cultural relativism).

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#287

Post by sp527 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #234

sp527 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if there's a dip around the upper middle/lower upper who, because of price discrimination on college costs and such must still be conservative, that then reverses course for the mid to upper upper, who have wealth in excess of any reasonable pattern of consumption and certainly more than enough to raise many children. I know that my plan is two max at the moment strictly because total cost per head i…

>(including total private college costs If your kids are too stupid to get tuition assistance, private college isn't going to do any more good for them than a regular local uni.

I'm not sure if you're being serious here. The bulk of available tuition assistance comes from financial aid, which usually isn't offered to families at or above roughly upper middle.

I also assume you'd only go to a private college that ranks highly, which means low access to meaningful amounts of income/wealth-independent scholarship money. A low-ranked private college is usually no better than many public ones.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#288

Post by Andre_Wanglin » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

aurailious wrote: post #185

Andre_Wanglin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is disingenuous to assert that immigration de facto causes resentment instead of the source population of the immigration.

I am not sure how you are implying those two things can be seperate. All immigrants have a source. Throughout US history there has been waves of immigration. Where that source is has changed along with the resentment of that source. It is not from any particular source that resentment occurs, but that there is immigration from a source at all.

That view is ahistorical. Anti-immigrant sentiment has always been directed at the source of the immigration. When Chinese began immigrating in the mid-late 19th century, immigration was suddenly a problem and so we had the national origins formula which ruled until 1965.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#289

Post by sp527 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #178

sp527 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if there's a dip around the upper middle/lower upper who, because of price discrimination on college costs and such must still be conservative, that then reverses course for the mid to upper upper, who have wealth in excess of any reasonable pattern of consumption and certainly more than enough to raise many children. I know that my plan is two max at the moment strictly because total cost per head i…

> I know that my plan is two max at the moment strictly because total cost per head is roughly $500k in today's dollars ( including total private college costs, which account for half of that ). So double the kids for same price assuming they go to a public university? Sounds like a good deal to me. FYI, you can cut that down even further if you go to a community college for the first year or two and then transfer.

Rank of the college matters in my opinion. It's unfortunate but it does create opportunities. High-ranked public universities are often really great, but usually comparable in total cost to private ones (with savings for being in-state in some cases).

But yes if you only gain admission to the long tail of private colleges, then you would almost certainly be wiser to go to a low-cost public school.

I wouldn't want my kids to consider community college unless they had to. By definition, I'd like them to have the same academic opportunities I had, if possible.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#290

Post by kaitai » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #230

annywhey wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stereotypical American setup is: Man helps by going to job, paying bills, doing "male-coded" household work(handyman, auto maintenance, etc.). Woman does "female-coded" equivalents(cooking, cleaning, shopping). In my own family the actual way it worked out was that both of them indulged their fixations and muddled through the rest without much discipline or mutual encouragement. This was imperfect but mostly work…

Isn't male coded housework quite difficult? My dad did a lot of projects on our house that were quite necessary to prevent things like mold growth or to make it easier to live there. He made my brother and I help a lot, and based on my memories, it was not easy work. We had this shower that needed sealing quite often, and from my memories, it was back breaking work. Often times, I would hope my mom would ask me to he…

Many people (regardless of gender) no longer know how to do any of these things. I've learned a lot about moisture management, mold growth, roof functioning, etc over some years of homeownership, a lot of it from my husband who learned it from his grandfather. Many of my peers have no idea about any of it.

The tasks you mention are amazingly important. However, many people today feel "male-coded" tasks encompass the following alone: take out trash, mow lawn, take car for oil change or car wash, set up TV. That set of tasks is not complex.