India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman • Hacker News Board

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#191

Post by michael1999 » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #66

gizmo686 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. There is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations…

> Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? At some point yes we do. > There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. > here is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Onc…

We entered the 20c with ~1.5Bp, and didn't hit 3 until we were ready to land on the moon. We have a loooong way to go before we run out of people to run an advanced economy.

As for the grey-aristocracy: it's already here, just unevenly distributed. Bruce Sterling described it vividly in Holy Fire (1996).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/359390.Holy_Fire

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#192

Post by inglor_cz » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

ativzzz wrote: post #171

bhouston wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Hungary, if you do it four times you are exempt from paying taxes for the rest of your life: "Hungarian women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax, the prime minister has said, unveiling plans designed to boost the number of babies being born." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47192612

Women with four children will most likely be full time moms for the majority of their productive lives so that's a pointless benefit, unless this policy manages to somehow reverse gender roles as well.

Even if said lady only rejoins the workforce for 20 years, the savings are fairly significant.

Also, knowing Hungary, this is probably intended as a subtle disincentive for the local Roma ghetto population. All the Central and Eastern European states fiddle with their welfare systems not to incentivize higher birthrates among the Roma ghetto population, even if they do not want to state this aloud. That is why the benefits target taxes, which you only pay if you actually work.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#193

Post by naravara » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #158

JPKab wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Think about the fact that the result of a low birth-rate with better medical tech keeping older people from dying when they otherwise would have. The result will be a far higher percentage of voters in democracies will be beneficiaries of the work of people younger than them. They will increasingly vote to expand the benefits they receive, at the expense of the younger folks who have to pay higher taxes to fu…

That won't end until young people actually show up to polls just as significantly. Politicians cater to their voting constituents and the elderly show up to vote stronger. Some of this is due to our suspect "you have this 1 Tuesday to do it" voting day. But what young people can do is make it socially unacceptable to not vote like the elderly do to each other.

Young people don't vote as much partly due to lack of habit, but also due to their jobs having less flexible scheduling and voter registration rolls being tied to where you live. Old people live in places longer, young people move more. It's simply a much bigger paperwork hurdle to get registered, find your polling place, etc. And that's assuming you can take time off and politicians have actually bothered trying to engage you where you're at rather than spending $50 Million on ad time in the evening news.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#194

Post by wonderwonder » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #105

lotsofpulp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what the market rate for pregnancy, giving birth, and breastfeeding will end up being. After seeing what it is like, if I was a woman, even the best current European benefits would not be enough.

In Hungary, if you do it four times you are exempt from paying taxes for the rest of your life: "Hungarian women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax, the prime minister has said, unveiling plans designed to boost the number of babies being born." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47192612

That's a pretty great incentive. From your article:

"As part of the measures, young couples will be offered interest-free loans of 10m forint (£27,400; $36,000), to be cancelled once they have three children."

The average household income in Hungary appears to be $7,100. So essentially they can get a potential 5 years of income for having kids. Massive incentive.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#195

Post by woodruffw » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

ativzzz wrote: post #171

bhouston wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Hungary, if you do it four times you are exempt from paying taxes for the rest of your life: "Hungarian women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax, the prime minister has said, unveiling plans designed to boost the number of babies being born." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47192612

Women with four children will most likely be full time moms for the majority of their productive lives so that's a pointless benefit, unless this policy manages to somehow reverse gender roles as well.

Given Orban's other political proclivities, enforcing traditional gender roles is likely an intentional outcome of this policy.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#196

Post by zionic » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

givemeethekeys wrote: post #146

Urbanization and education have been among the two greatest downward pressures on population growth.

What if we find out it's not actually urbanization/education, but a correlating exposure that happens when societies industrialize and there's no way out?

Education doesn't explain male sperm counts being down 50% in 50 years.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#197

Post by zionic » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

cute_boi wrote: post #97

doesn't matter to be honest. We are already overpopulated and those who says it isn't just doesn't know how many people live under poverty and are simply privileged. I understand if we manage resources properly we have very high carrying capacity but it is not pragmatic to solve all those problems. Human greed, corruption has no bounds and will always hinder and there is no solution, is there? Rules, laws are general…

The US is massively under-populated.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#198

Post by inglor_cz » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #159

Angostura wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I predict these issues will cause bigger problems than population expansion ever did. You need to factor in the problems that population expansion would cause in the future.

The ones predicted by Malthus, that never happened and never will?

Malthus wasn't completely wrong, but international trade mitigates the problem. This, of course, requires large surpluses in the exporting countries and fully operational supply chains, which we tended to take for granted until now.

An example: Egypt, a former granary of the Mediterranean, is now a net food importer and a sudden swing in world commodity prices could very well topple the ruling junta.

This wouldn't have happened if the Egyptian population growth leveled off at more reasonable numbers (say, only 30 million people crammed into the narrow Nile delta instead of 100 million).

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#199

Post by zionic » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #185

_haoa wrote: post #145

Taking this as an opportunity to plug the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). Pay no attention to the tongue-in-cheek name, it has nothing to do with mass suicide or genocide, and merely advocates for us to stop breeding. From https://www.vhemt.org/ : > Phasing out the human species by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortage…

You'll just naturally select yourself out of the gene pool...

Exactly. Would that be such a bad thing? Spend some time on /r/childfree. It's probably for the best that the people filling those comment sections don't multiply.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#200

Post by zionic » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

the_doctah wrote: post #75

baybal2 wrote: post #40

The "population bomb" is the invention of eugenicists trying remake themselves into demographers in a bid to stay relevant. The very same people who funded "sterilisation vans" in Asia were rooting for abortion bans in the West, and promoting "traditional family," in other words plain, old HITLERITES.

You've made a similar comment twice in the same thread now. You seem to think overpopulation is a myth.

>You seem to think overpopulation is a myth.

Not OP but I'm certainly leaning this way now after previously being concerned about it. Seemingly all/most of our advanced societies have negative population growth.

I'm not sure why this is considered ok.