More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

Good, the world doesn't need more people.

Adoption is always a great option if you want a child to raise.

Anecdotally, the problem is much worse among those that contribute more in taxes than consume in public benefits. This is the real problem. Low-skill high-fertility immigration will not solve it. Child tax credits will not solve it. Welfare programs will not solve it. These problems all exacerbate the problem by growing the population below the net-income line. You may say that these people are more necessary or useful than those above, but that is a different debate.

Net-income-positive Americans are choosing not to be parents because the law is openly hostile to it. Some examples:

Child support: The minimum guideline is 33% of income for a single child, non-deductible. US/CA taxes take ~55%, so that leaves 12%. If you have a great tech salary of $150k, that leaves you with a living budget of $1500/mo. The only way to survive here on that is in your car. (I have done this. Not a career enhancer.) Meanwhile, nobody needs $4000/mo extra to raise a child, unless they are paying somebody else to do it. This is why women have a hard time finding mates. The only men that are willing to take that risk of relationship breakup are those with nothing to lose. It’s horribly dysgenic, and frankly awful for the kids it is trying to protect, because now they end up with a working mother and a deadbeat father, by design. And by the way, this is not a gendered issue. The first I became aware of it was by a woman that was forced to both give up her kids and pay her ex.

Child care: The licensing, certification, and insurance requirements have turned this into a human farming business. When I was growing up, kids just sort of roamed, and then the police started notifying parents that they had to send them to certified daycare, so my mom got the certification until some professional daycare moved in and started calling the inspectors any time we went outside to play in the woods. Now it’s much worse; daycare costs more than most jobs pay, and those with nothing to lose just ignore the law anyway.

The only way it makes legal sense to have children is if both parents are either on welfare, or part of an immigrant community that operates outside of the rules. My recommendation to my children will be to move out of the country immediately after graduation to a place that is more financially and legally family-friendly, then start finding a partner and having children right away. The opportunities for this decline much faster than any goals other than professional athletics.

It is Europe buddy. Every country there was invaded and occupied by someone else at some time in history, with or without immigrants.

The history of Europe is basically 3000 years of someone invading someone else's country and stealing their cows. Actually, the Italians spent most of their history doing exactly that to themselves. Up until the unification at late 19th century, Italians killed more Italians than any barbarian invasion.

That is sensible only to you. I love how policies are designated as 'common sense' to try to promote acceptance. Let me decide what is common sense.

I have been recently picturing a dystopia (utopia?) wherein women sell their eggs to some kind of govt. agency which in turn hires women who are willing to carry babies to term.

These babies are then raised in child group homes by state employees all the way from infancy. Meanwhile the state pays for their education until they either graduate or until some kind of arbitrary deadline.

Thus the problem could become cost effective due to economies of scale thereby partially mitigating the cost problem.

However, it is still unclear whether to then make childbirth opt-in or something along those lines.

If we are going to farm kids, then why not do it properly?

/s