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We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

nytimes.com

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Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#321

Post by MichaelDickens »

captainredbeard wrote: post #208
Frost1x wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While endocrine disruption or inhibitors are very likely a factor to blame, I think we also have cultural and socioeconomic factors compounding the problem. There are so many who just don't want to deal with the current dating and casual sex culture. The rewards for time investment and effort just aren't that high compared to alternatives available to many, compounded by other factors of daily life competing for that…

> who are interested in casual sex but the effort is simply too high for them to pursue They are outcompeted due to a lack of initiative and willpower; that's evolution doing its job.

Evolution is not prescriptive. Just because a certain outcome is favored by evolution doesn't mean that outcome is good.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#322

Post by dv_dt »

brandmeyer wrote: post #215
agent008t wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Inflation can be easily created - just create more dollars and credit them to people's bank accounts; you will soon see all kinds of prices going up.

If this was true, then the monetary policies of the 2008 financial crash and the 2020 pandemic would both have created consumer price inflation. They haven't. We've seen some asset price inflation instead. In effect we did create a bunch of dollars and credited them to people's home equity and mutual funds... where it just sat there doing a whole bunch of nothing to consumer prices and wages.

In 2008 and really also in 2020, the bulk of the created dollars wasn't given to people where it might create consumer price inflation, by a vast degree it was allocated at the top. There it is creating asset price inflation local to the place of major injection.

It's a poor stimulus effect if one is trying to use it to move the economy.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#323

Post by nineplay »

beaconstudios wrote: post #248
nineplay wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prop up the status quo. > play to the confirmation bias of their audience I wonder how much overlap their is between the two. It seems to me that lately, if anything, the media pushes the narrative that the status quo is hopelessly corrupt in order to confirm to their audiences conformation bias. People on all sides of the political spectrum are eating up stories about who's to blame, whether it's the government or…

It gets interesting when the status quo becomes "everything is corrupt, including the status quo". See also: selling of expensive anticapitalist clothing, revolution as a brand, etc. Self referentiality and the emptying of meaning from symbols is an important symptom of postmodernism. > People on all sides of the political spectrum are eating up stories about who's to blame, whether it's the government or the billion…

I sometimes go through the thought exercise of making myself responsible of decisions with wide-ranging consequences.

I'm sitting here architecting a little project here and I had plenty of bad ideas and assumptions. In my space, that's fine, it's part of the design process.

If I was head of the CDC and trying to figure out how to handle this unprecedented global pandemic I'd also make plenty of mistakes and missteps. In this case, however, mistakes and missteps mean criticism from all sides and probably people dying.

It's a horrible responsibility and it's sure that rather than people are going to call it encroaching socialism or government incompetence or corruption.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#324

Post by gadders »

minikites wrote: post #94
gadders wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a valid perspective, but times have been a lot worse in the past. It's a good job our ancestors didn't think like this.

History is not a monotonically increasing function of progress. Things can and often do get worse in the short term and there's no reason the past can't be better than the present.

You could say now is a local minimum, but in what time period? Out of the last twenty years? Maybe. The last hundred? Probably not.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#325

Post by mdorazio »

captainredbeard wrote: post #208
Frost1x wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While endocrine disruption or inhibitors are very likely a factor to blame, I think we also have cultural and socioeconomic factors compounding the problem. There are so many who just don't want to deal with the current dating and casual sex culture. The rewards for time investment and effort just aren't that high compared to alternatives available to many, compounded by other factors of daily life competing for that…

> who are interested in casual sex but the effort is simply too high for them to pursue They are outcompeted due to a lack of initiative and willpower; that's evolution doing its job.

This comment is needlessly flippant. The move to online dating (and social media profiles in general) has radically shifted how dating works. A quick look at any research from OK Cupid or others who investigate perceptions, ratings, etc. very clearly shows that it’s become a meat market where a small number of men get a disproportionate amount of the available dates. Before online dating, expectations were generally more in line with reality and dating was far less of a chore.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#326

Post by wcarss »

bradleyjg wrote: post #295
wcarss wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what the value to you is here in arguing that we all ought to just settle for less. More space is preferable, better conditions are preferable, and we do have the capabilities to work toward these things for all humans. The specific factors of post-WWII America may be unlikely ever to be repeated, but I can't agree that we should all settle for life as it was in the 1910s or earlier on the basis th…

People shouldn’t be made to feel like they would be or are bad parents if they put two kids in a room. Because I think the upshot to that is not going to be some workers’ movement that produces less inequality but instead fewer people that want kids having them due to fear of social stigma.

That's a really good point! I agree that we should be supportive of parents in the face of circumstances they can't directly control, rather than stigmatize them or hold them to an unfair standard. Thanks for explaining it that way.

I also think we can both do that and work to continue to improve circumstances, which to me includes recognizing that the circumstances can be improved.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#327

Post by [deleted] »

globular-toast wrote: post #251
opwieurposiu wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not want to have kids. Then one day I realized that for the past 3 billion years my ancestors had been passing the torch. I was not going to be the one to let down the team. I felt a duty to give my genes a chance to fight it out in darwin's cage match. I can not guarantee my genes will win, but if I fail to reproduce I guarantee they will lose. Looking back, I am not sure this justification makes any sense, bu…

Your ancestors were just fucking without contraception. They weren't trying to "pass on the torch" or anything silly like that.

[deleted]

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#328

Post by ed_balls »

ph4 wrote: post #283
SamuelAdams wrote: post #29

I wonder if there's a good way to model the cost of children over the last 100 years? My guess is fewer people are having children due to the financial costs rising considerably.

My first kid was just born last week. The hospital billed my insurance company $45k. This is for an uncomplicated, straight-forward vaginal birth.

is it really $45k in US? Or just the company told you they are billed 45k but they "negotiate" it down to 10k. In my country a birth in private hospital cost $3k...

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#329

Post by xeromal »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #321
captainredbeard wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who are interested in casual sex but the effort is simply too high for them to pursue They are outcompeted due to a lack of initiative and willpower; that's evolution doing its job.

Evolution is not prescriptive. Just because a certain outcome is favored by evolution doesn't mean that outcome is good .

I don't think the poster said it was good, just that it was working as expected. The people with less willpower get filtered out
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