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

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

#321

Post by raverbashing »

dragontamer wrote: post #309
raverbashing wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. But it's a fact. Do you know what works for a significant number of them? Antisemitism. Homophobia. Ingrained misogyny. Hate towards atheists.

> Antisemitism I don't think that Muslimphobia is an appropriate response to Antisemitism. Look: the Nazis were primarily Christian. We recognized the political movement of the Nazis as independent of their religion. People today still don't realize that the Ba'athists of Iraq (who eventually joined with ISIS) were SECULAR. Hint: Religion is at best, a minor component to the violent middle-eastern philosophy. The Mid…

I see your point, I don't see why it is relevant, I know about Ba'ath, etc.

I know that Jews have been suffering more attacks in Europe recently including one in Berlin that wasn't a jew but wore a kippah to "prove it was not dangerous" and got attacked. So ignoring the issue or just sidelining issue is not ideal.

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

#322

Post by skissane »

loggedinmyphone wrote: post #308
skissane wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fairness many Catholics don't accept Protestants as Christians either. If any Catholic actually thinks this, they must be deeply ignorant of Catholic theology. According to the Catholic Church, anyone baptised using water and with a Trinitarian formula is Christian. Most Protestant denominations baptise people in this way, so most baptised Protestants are Christians according to traditional Catholic theology. (A…

That's interesting but I thought the Donatist decision only applied to people who wanted to be part of the Roman Catholic church but their baptising priest had at some point lapsed. Generally Protestants don't recognize the authority of the church at all (i.e. Sola scriptura).

Donatists claimed that sacraments were only valid if the priest who performed them was a faithful Christian. So if the priest was a heretic or grave sinner, the sacraments he performed were invalid. The Catholic Church declared that to be a heresy – a heretic or a sinner can still perform valid sacraments, provided the heresy doesn't involve a radically different understanding of the nature of the sacrament.

So, from the viewpoint of traditional Catholic theology, Protestants are heretics, but their beliefs about baptism are close enough to the Catholic belief that their heresy doesn't invalidate their baptisms. (Different story for ordination and the eucharist, since Protestant theology on those topics is further away from Catholic theology.) Whereas, non-Trinitarian Christians, the Catholic Church views their beliefs to directly touch on what the sacrament of baptism is about, so their non-Trinitarianism invalidates their baptisms from the Catholic viewpoint.

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

#323

Post by Eridrus »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #5

Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. We as a society need to re-examine the causes of rising costs of essentials so reproduction is no longer financially infeasible.

Interestingly the US fertility rate started declining in 2008, and Canada's hit a peak in 2008 and went down from there.

Also interesting: China's fertility rate is apparently lower than the US's.

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

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

#324

Post by user5994461 »

drak0n1c wrote: post #122
cheeseomlit wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that birth rates have gone down though? Many factors, mostly economic, which should be addressed instead of importing millions of people who will soon be replaced by automation anyways.

People used to have many more kids regardless of whether they were facing good or bad times. I'd say the change is less economic and more due to culture - both men and women want less kids. There is economics in the cultural change - as people get wealthier and government welfare becomes more reliable the forces behind maintaining and growing the family decreases. Wealthy people in the past still had many more kids t…

You forget the most basic fact. We understand how children are made now, or not made.

It may sound stupid but it was not obvious a hundred years ago. The wife is pregnant again, well, must be an act of god.

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

#325

Post by dragontamer »

raverbashing wrote: post #321
dragontamer wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Antisemitism I don't think that Muslimphobia is an appropriate response to Antisemitism. Look: the Nazis were primarily Christian. We recognized the political movement of the Nazis as independent of their religion. People today still don't realize that the Ba'athists of Iraq (who eventually joined with ISIS) were SECULAR. Hint: Religion is at best, a minor component to the violent middle-eastern philosophy. The Mid…

I see your point, I don't see why it is relevant, I know about Ba'ath, etc. I know that Jews have been suffering more attacks in Europe recently including one in Berlin that wasn't a jew but wore a kippah to "prove it was not dangerous" and got attacked. So ignoring the issue or just sidelining issue is not ideal.

Its certainly an issue. But antisemitism / Holocaust deniers are kind of a universal group. Not only are there certain Arab groups who are Holocaust deniers, but there are also Right-Wing KKK Members who were making their anti-Semitism quite clear just a few months ago.

https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline/public...

Antisemitism is on the rise. But blaming it squarely on Muslims is just plain wrong. The above Swastika was found at the infamous Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally.

I don't necessarily have answers. But I'm also not entirely sure why Muslims get all the blame here. There are plenty of Muslims who are literally thousands of miles away from these incidents (ie: Nigerian Muslims) who really shouldn't be lumped together with the rest of the crap going on.

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

#326

Post by jacquesm »

wetpaws wrote: post #310
dionidium wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

This is precisely what I meant. Good luck searching for tech jobs in Portland or even in Seattle outside of Amazon/MS

There are tech jobs everywhere. From Toronto to Paraguay and from SF to NYC and everywhere in between.

Technology is everywhere, it is almost impossible to find a place where there are no tech jobs. But the bigger cities tend to have more of them and for better pay and Silicon Valley, New York, DC, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and so on will have the best paid jobs but also the highest cost of living.

Silicon Valley is an outlier in many respects, you should not calibrate your worldview by it. If you mean by tech job: a place where I can sit in a chair and make 7 figures easily then indeed, there are no tech jobs outside of SV and Seattle.

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

#327

Post by the_svd_doctor »

r00fus wrote: post #259
toomuchtodo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately yes.

I'm what you would call a (potential) high-skilled immigrant (STEM Phd soon completed at top tier college). Clearly, the current policies don't make me want to stay. The path to permanent residency (i.e. proper immigration) is getting harder and harder.

No longer that two days ago we got an email about "public charges" (i.e. -legal- public help that would make Dhs/State consider us a burden to the US) and how we should be careful not to use those while in the US, otherwise we can get denied entry/visa. Yikes.

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

#328

Post by loggedinmyphone »

user5994461 wrote: post #324
drak0n1c wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People used to have many more kids regardless of whether they were facing good or bad times. I'd say the change is less economic and more due to culture - both men and women want less kids. There is economics in the cultural change - as people get wealthier and government welfare becomes more reliable the forces behind maintaining and growing the family decreases. Wealthy people in the past still had many more kids t…

You forget the most basic fact. We understand how children are made now, or not made. It may sound stupid but it was not obvious a hundred years ago. The wife is pregnant again, well, must be an act of god.

You have a remarkable conception of what life was like a hundred years ago.

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

#329

Post by dragonwriter »

loggedinmyphone wrote: post #308
skissane wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fairness many Catholics don't accept Protestants as Christians either. If any Catholic actually thinks this, they must be deeply ignorant of Catholic theology. According to the Catholic Church, anyone baptised using water and with a Trinitarian formula is Christian. Most Protestant denominations baptise people in this way, so most baptised Protestants are Christians according to traditional Catholic theology. (A…

That's interesting but I thought the Donatist decision only applied to people who wanted to be part of the Roman Catholic church but their baptising priest had at some point lapsed. Generally Protestants don't recognize the authority of the church at all (i.e. Sola scriptura).

The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize, in a doctrinal sense (obviously, it does in a secular material sense) the existence of any other Christian Churches [0]; it takes the “Catholic” in its name quite seriously.

From the doctrinal point of view, there are no non-Catholic Christians, just Catholics of various degrees of imperfection, is and everyone who intends to join Christianity, or to join someone else to it, intends joining to the Catholic Church as the two are identical and coextensive.

[0] it does recognize particular churches, but they are part of rather than separate from the universal Church; in addition to those in full communion with Rome, these include Christian communities who are out of Communion with Rome but who retain valid episcopal apostolic succession, including the various Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, among others.

> Generally Protestants don't recognize the authority of the church at all (i.e. Sola scriptura).

Sola scriptura is a doctrine of a subset of protestantism; there are Protestants who don't adhere to it but instead to prima scriptura, or to doctrines that aren't clearly either. It is certainly not the case that Protestants as a whole reject ecclesiastical authority.

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

#330

Post by dayofthedaleks »

matte_black wrote: post #186
jotm wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Durr Durr but the next Einstein

If we were serious about finding the next Einstein we would be attempting to maximize the pairing of individuals who could produce such a person. This may someday be feasible, as genetic testing and online dating begin to intersect, but the time is not yet.

So... the Bene Gesserit breeding program to produce the Kwizatz Haderach, then.
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