Interesting... How many people here would say that they have actively decided not to have children? I am just curious.
I have. Generally, I don't want children for reasons that I don't think much good would come out of it.
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
#422Earlier 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.
Just wondering why can't people hire some illegal immigrant girl to watch babies ? It is like one of the simplest job ever.
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Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a debt-based growth-dependent (to repay ever the increasing debts) economy, it crashes everything. Turns out assuming infinite growth does not produce a stable civilization. This is why there are concomitantly erstwhile calls for people to both reduce their "footprint" by not reproducing and also that immigration is crucial to every (western) society's survival.
Do you know of any good example steady state economies for contrast?
Unfortunately, the exponential-growth economies ate them all.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#424Earlier 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.
Just wondering why can't people hire some illegal immigrant girl to watch babies ? It is like one of the simplest job ever.
Caring for an infant is hard, high-skilled work and something you want to get right. "Shaken baby" is a real thing and can lead to development disorders. A hands-on attentive caretaker has a very good ROI -- healthier, more communicative toddler and child. "You get what you pay for [or do yourself]" is a real thing for the first few years of a child's life, and having family nearby, which we fortunately did, was invaluable.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are correct that it does not take $60K a year to raise a kid (or two or three). There has been a meme for a couple decades now, that kids are so expensive and will cost millions of dollars to raise, etc. This meme is doubtless responsible for much of the reduced birthrate. You can spend as much or as little as you desire on kids. I grew up shopping at Goodwill, but now I buy $40 shoes that my kids will wear for 6…
Being practical hardly constitutes a "trust issue". It's as if none of the people criticizing me have a concept of relationships grounded in reality. It wasn't the topic and I shouldn't have to defend my relationship here.
Nope, you shouldn't have to. I really wasn't attacking you, but on the contrary, was trying to be helpful, since you had expressed desire to have kids, and then were deciding not to.
It seemed necessary for me to qualify my encouragement for you to not abandon the idea of kids, on the condition that you could make yourself feel safe in the relationship, since it seemed like you did not.
It just makes me sad to see successful people deciding not to have kids, given the subject of this thread and given the very few number of my friends, my wife's friends, my family, and my wife's family that had kids.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#426As half of a thirty somethings couple that wants children but can’t afford the financial implications in the Bay Area, it seems pretty clear to me why fertility is down.
Each day on my walk to work, I pass by a couple houses for sale. They are on .25 acre lots, less than a mile from the beach, and likely to sell for about $250,000 each. That is, uh, about 10% of the San Francisco cost or 20% of the general Bay Area cost. Salaries are more like 50%, and of course that also means a lower income tax bracket. Other stuff is cheaper too, like food and gasoline. Last I checked, the price o…
where
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm, it's easy to find credible claims that they weren't, e.g. https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/when-iri...
The racists of the day were apparently quite progressive. They couldn't even see the color of the person's skin. It's almost like race is more of a social construct than a biological one.
Or more accurately, that racism is a social construct.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#428UBI is the only way forward .
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Each day on my walk to work, I pass by a couple houses for sale. They are on .25 acre lots, less than a mile from the beach, and likely to sell for about $250,000 each. That is, uh, about 10% of the San Francisco cost or 20% of the general Bay Area cost. Salaries are more like 50%, and of course that also means a lower income tax bracket. Other stuff is cheaper too, like food and gasoline. Last I checked, the price o…
where
Indialantic, FL
This is a 4-bedroom house, supposedly for $275,000 but likely to go cheaper:
https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/indialantic/421-e-riviera-blvd-i...
There are a couple smaller places, a tad cheaper, on neighboring streets.
One can work for Raytheon, Northrop Grummen, Harris, Lockheed Martin, Thales, GE (trains), and several cybersecurity startups. All of those are doing well. Doing less well I think, there is also: Intersil (a wireless chip company), DRS (a military optics company), NASA contractors, etc.
I don't believe this place is particularly special. All across America, there are smallish cities in which the finances work out for tech professionals.
Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
#430Earlier 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.
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