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The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

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Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#11

Post by seem_2211 »

I think it's cutting in at both ends of the economic spectrum as well. For millennials the world over you have a choice in your early twenties - you can get a degree, move to a big city and focus on your career. This means you probably get married/start settling down closer to 30, and limit yourself at 1-2 children (if any). Or you can stay closer to where you grew up and focus on your family at a younger age.

The American situation is increasingly sharp on both ends - if you're making $40k as a household in rural America, you're financially screwed if anything bad happens to you - in ways that aren't even relevant in other countries (thank you no state healthcare / no maternity leave), but at the top end, you're also pushed out - because you've graduated with $40k + in loans, and can't buy a house for less than $500k+ (and what, $1m+ in the Bay Area).

Structurally things are very bad for millennials. But things will change - it's never as bad as the news makes it out to be. In the next ten years the voting power blocs will change, and politicians will be forced to change policy in our favour. I only hope we don't screw the coming generations like the boomers did for us with their lack of foresight.

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#12

Post by kasey_junk »

soontobemd55 wrote: post #8
devereaux wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I avoid Vox articles due to the unsubtle feminist ideologies > (...) recent cringe Vox interview with Jordan Peterson that kept trying put words in his mouth > (...) I see no future for myself outside of being someone's mortgage hound or alimony sugar daddy. That escalated quickly!

I feel this too. Most of my cis male friends won't date people that will make less money than them. I know I won't.

Is your intention to have a partner that walks in lockstep through career paths over the course of a long career?

How do you intend to deal with illness, career changes & family raising?

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#13

Post by kasey_junk »

AIX2ESXI wrote: post #10
kasey_junk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else was curious what SMV means in this comment it seems to be Sexual Market Value. It’s a term used amongst red pill/incel and such communities.

It was also used by the pick up artist communities before that too. Basically anyone who studies modern human sexuality. But hey, write me off as a Incel or whatever you want. All non feminist men are toxic, right?

Projecting a touch? I’d just never heard the term before. It does frame your comment to understand the community you are coming from though.

I’m not at all surprised that you are feeling economic & social pressure in modern society.

Your reaction is interesting...

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#14

Post by pizza »

AIX2ESXI wrote: post #10
kasey_junk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else was curious what SMV means in this comment it seems to be Sexual Market Value. It’s a term used amongst red pill/incel and such communities.

It was also used by the pick up artist communities before that too. Basically anyone who studies modern human sexuality. But hey, write me off as a Incel or whatever you want. All non feminist men are toxic, right?

The pick up artist community seems fairly toxic..

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#15

Post by grawprog »

salawat wrote: post #3

There were a couple points in there that could, may, should have been left on the cutting room floor. Some good points were made however. Social Security in its original Ponzi-Schemesque form will end up even worse for wear with declining birthrates. (Not saying Social Security is bad in concept, but it only works in times of sharp population growth, and even then, banking on the youth to carry you just because seems…

...as much as I know it's pointless commenting on things...

Here's my perspective. I'm thirty, I've been in a relationship since I was 17...the same relationship..we've talked about kids a lot...at this point...I really don't think even with both of us steadily working for several years now at decent jobs we can afford to raise a kid. We've agreed we don't feel like it's fair to raise a child without being able to provide a decent standard of life and our own standard of life ia not the best as it is, despite both of us working full time, with regular overtime, at skilled jobs.

As far as online presence goes...clearly as I'm shadowbanned on here I haven't quite grasped the...uh...I would say subtlties, I suppose, of having a reasonable online presence. I haven't gotten used to the idea of the internet being a place where one posts real personal information, despite having been on the internet since the early nineties....I still see it as a place where identities don't matter and people who post personal information online are fucking idiots.

In all honesty, i've never really participated much on online communities until recently but still go about it with that nineties mindset not really understanding people are fairly hypersensitive (a bunch of little bitches) to stuff online these days.. I keep a fairly strict separation between stuff I do on a computer online and everything else in my life. I realize it's a necessity to start mixing the two...but I find it hard to combine an online presence with my real life stuff.

It's one of these thing's i've beeen working on though because i've found that's what all my friends and people I know have done.

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#16

Post by throw_this_one »

AIX2ESXI wrote: post #4
salawat wrote: post #3

There were a couple points in there that could, may, should have been left on the cutting room floor. Some good points were made however. Social Security in its original Ponzi-Schemesque form will end up even worse for wear with declining birthrates. (Not saying Social Security is bad in concept, but it only works in times of sharp population growth, and even then, banking on the youth to carry you just because seems…

[flagged]

Think it through though. It's easy to follow the bandwagon of guys that purport that life to be the solution (I read all this stuff too), and I thought it was too at some point. I think you should go taste that lifestyle, but I think you'd find it to be only a short term fix and the same sort of "trap" awaiting you at the end.

The solution to just simply arm yourself with all the knowledge you can, and then embark on the path to self-actualize. Between self-actualization and playing things close to your vest and smart, I think you can still make it work very well in America. Nowhere has the same purchasing power parity too for tech salaries (except maybe Switzerland).

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#17

Post by AIX2ESXI »

soontobemd55 wrote: post #8
devereaux wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I avoid Vox articles due to the unsubtle feminist ideologies > (...) recent cringe Vox interview with Jordan Peterson that kept trying put words in his mouth > (...) I see no future for myself outside of being someone's mortgage hound or alimony sugar daddy. That escalated quickly!

I feel this too. Most of my cis male friends won't date people that will make less money than them. I know I won't.

Yup. Most men will actually marry down economically, but women generally marry up economically. Perhaps when this is finally noticed, men will only marry their equals. With women graduating college at higher rates, perhaps this changes?

https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/marrying-down-why-men-are-the...

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#18

Post by hugh4life »

8bitsrule wrote: post #6

Isn't just economic, methinks: Millennials also tend to be more perceptive about the costs of overpopulation and the approach of global warming. The wisdom of Small Is Beautiful is not so lost on them.

"Small Is Beautiful"

Um, E. F. Schumacher had 8 kids. He was more concerned with how people interacted with each other and not overpopulation.

Re: The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been in 30 years

#20

Post by IkmoIkmo »

I'm not sure I completely agree with the economic argument, particularly because birth rates and wealthiness tend to move in opposite directions and because a comparative analysis doesn't show that strong welfare states which protect a person's income, income stability and alleviate all the costs of being a parent, don't show strong birth rates either. It feels like getting children is still very much a choice, but that our cultural norms about what a 'proper life' means has changed. No longer as a young person do I feel as compelled to marry, get a home in a suburb with a yard and a dog not to be cast out or judged. It's not because it's more difficult for me to afford kids than my parents or their parents, who struggled financially more than I do and had to work more hours, had less leisure time, fewer luxuries etc. I think it's a bit too easy to say 'kids these days saw parent' savings disappear in the financial crisis' as if their parents' parents didn't see their parents in world war ii, and their grandparents in the great depression as a reason not to have kids. Again, wealth and birth rates move in opposite directions. Kids used to be a form of welfare system, too, you had no state or business to give you a pension or pay for your care, but your kids did. Now we're rich enough where kids aren't needed as an economic asset (working the land) or welfare asset (caring for you in retirement). But to say they're less affordable than before, I'm not so sure.

Most of the predictions about the welfare state are true, though. In that some of its effects mimic a ponzi scheme.

I'd urge everyone and anyone to look up an age pyramid for their country from 1950 and onwards. It's absolutely telling. Preferably an animation.

e.g. Japan here: https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/1950/

You can click through every 5 years. It's like a snake with food passing through it's body, starting with a big blob of young people who gradually move into old age, without replacement. The proportion of young (suppose an arbitrary =40) to old completely flips over. In Japan it was 75% in 1950, but just 44.5% in 2010. If you take 65+ as a threshold, it was just 5% in 1950, but 23% in 2010. That's 4x as many retirees to support on a dwindling young (mostly) working population. 5% 65+ and 95 And that matters a ton because there's a gigantic age asymmetry in terms of expenditure by age group in certain fields. Take healthcare expenses by age: https://jamanetwork.com/data/Journals/JAMA/935941/joi160128f...

You basically spend a ton at birth and as an old person. With low birth rates and massive improvements to healthcare increasing life expectancy, we're heading for a disaster. The tax base is rapidly depleting and the tax burden is rapidly increasing.

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