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The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

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Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#181

Post by shadowgovt »

UncleMeat wrote: post #128
JKCalhoun wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that it were a game of SimCity. If/when we get to 4B, 2B, it will be only after displacements of whole populations, mass-starvation, and likely brutal war.

It's amazing that we had oodles of "population growth will cause mass-starvation, we need global policy to limit the population to the current size" worries on the run up from 2B to 8B and now we've got "population decline will cause mass-starvation, we need global policy to limit the population to the current size" worries. And the global population isn't falling. Birth rates are only below replacement among certain…

Good news, unfortunately, rarely radiates with the power or urgency of bad news.

The mass-starvation concerns of the '70s-'80s were resolved by an army of agriculture and biological scientists developing revolutionary breakthroughs in staple food crops and farming techniques. These fundamentally staved off the "cold equations" starvation risk (most starvation in the modern era is logistical error; the food exists, it isn't where people are).

Unfortunately, key pieces of the solutions involved practices we know aren't sustainable indefinitely (fertilizer production is fossil-fuel heavy), so there's more work to be done (and some non-zero benefit if we were to discover that the global human population was falling without some mass-tragedy causing it).

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#182

Post by phkahler »

IMHO instead of trying to use UBI to help folks afford things, we should be trying to reduce the actual cost of living for everyone. This would also reduce peoples dependence on Social Security in the US which should go over well in congress.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#183

Post by Temporary_31337 »

The future is not too expensive- people have just grown balooning expectations of what is minimal sustenance for children - people on <$200 month have 5 children families all over hte world and then you see people on 100k+ salaries saying they can't 'afford' to have chlidren. The truth is they can't afford to keep all the nice things - free time for hobbies/sports etc (childcare), holidays etc while still having children. Sacrifice some of that and suddenly most people can afford children but most people don't have enough moral value and a sense of duty to the society to sacrfice anything for a better future - in fact it's opposite - with credit cards and debt you sacrifice the future for sake of some frivolous consumption now.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#184

Post by toomuchtodo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #162
Kivern7 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody thinks like this. Not a single intelligent, successful, prosperous woman is going to be even slightly motivated to have a baby over the long-term viability and credibility of fiat currency, whereas I personally know of two people who only exist because their welfare-dependent mother impulsively took advantage of a government cash bonus by getting knocked up by a man she barely knew, and then promptly did so ag…

We're not asking mothers to think like this. We're asking legislators to think like this.

The time horizon is too long and the gains too far into the future for legislators to care. It’s short termism all the way down.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#185

Post by phkahler »

bradlys wrote: post #147
UncleMeat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it is absolutely baffling to me that the discussion of teen pregnancy never seems to come up in these "oh no birth rates are down" discussions. Like, you told us that a substantial portion of these births were bad for society (and I generally agree) and now you are freaking out that the number of births went down?

Most people aren’t aware - especially in educated UMC circles like this one - how much the birth rate relied on teenage moms. The birthrate for educated folks has been below replacement for a long time. Teenage moms probably aren’t in their mind cause they were raised among other UMC folks and it just doesn’t happen there. The US has been below replacement overall for even longer. We’ve relied on immigration for 50+…

>> but the biggest influence of whether people have kids is if they’re getting into relationships.

cue the discussion about the dating crisis... A lot of people are having a hard time forming relationships for various reasons.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#186

Post by joquarky »

chuankl wrote: post #170
kaibee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, kids are expensive. But countries like Korea and Singapore are pouring money into incentives and still seeing fertility drop to record lows. This is what you're missing. They are not. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, you could have gone from 0 people bailing water on the ship with buckets to the whole complement of crew and passengers (if you had enough buckets). You could talk about how there's now thousands…

> Well, we took the "slack" out of the system and sold it. Without really being aware of its value. I think this is the key insight, on this specific topic and many others.

Bob was right. Don't let them take your slack.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#187

Post by rdm_blackhole »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #124
Kivern7 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are an asset for net tax-recipients, but a liability for net tax-payers. I grew up in a very poor area and heard firsthand teenage girls excited over how much welfare money they can receive for babies. It's an inversion of the natural order. It's state-manipulated breeding incentives between different classes of people. It's literally eugenics.

Children are a massive asset for tax-payers. Money is a claim on the production of a country. Without that production, money is just a useless piece of paper or useless entry in a bank database. And for a country to produce, it needs people of working age. More concretely, let's suppose you're 92 and you need full time nursing care. You still have retirements savings so should be able to pay for it. Now let's say the…

> Now let's say there are more people needing nursing than there are nurses. What happens to the cost of that nursing?

The cost does not change. This situation that you describe is already present a many countries who have an acute nurse shortage. The gap as always is filled by immigrants from the global south.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#188

Post by sanderjd »

surgical_fire wrote: post #154
sanderjd wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two points: 1. In rich countries (like the US, where I live), some of the cost of children is subsidized for poor people. 2. Middle class parents are very unlikely to raise their children at the same cost as poor parents. If they can afford better things for their kids, they will . There is enormous social (even moral) pressure on parents to make sacrifices for their kids. Note that I think both of these things are g…

My two cents as someone that had his only child past the age of 40: More than low birth rates, I think that the problem is that people are postponing children until the last possible moment biology allows for it. The reason is that people need to have their life in order before having children. I imagine it was easier in the past than nowadays. You have Children and need to work? Daycare is extremely expensive. Want…

I wouldn't say "more than", I would just say that these are both different problems, with different impacts. I don't think it's obvious which thing is a bigger problem. But yes, I agree that the root causes are likely similar.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#189

Post by gwd »

pjc50 wrote: post #92
gwd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m This video would beg to differ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk&pp=ygUWa3Vyemdlc... That said, I am inclined to disagree with his take -- when women and men are both expected to work 996, when housing takes up a huge percentage of your income, when the only way you think you can assure a good life for your children is to pay exorbitant…

Why have two people linked the same youtube video as if that's some kind of response to a graph? The population has (past tense) levelled out. It is roughly flat over the past few years. It is not yet falling at a significant rate. It is a long time away from "the population is 5% off its peak", and my argument is that that is the real signal (in the control theory sense) which people might respond to, the rise in em…

> Why have two people linked the same youtube video as if that's some kind of response to a graph?

Because the "but" in the sentence implies that leveling out means there's no problem. Filling out the missing pieces:

> South Korea is invoked [as an example of a country that is in major trouble], but it seems like the population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m [, which implies it's reached a stable and sustainable equilibrium.]

The video predicts not that it's at a stable plateau, but that it's reached the apex of its curve and is about to begin plummeting.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#190

Post by rdm_blackhole »

Tade0 wrote: post #109
rdm_blackhole wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with you. It is good to be cautious when thinking about having kids. Having a child is not like picking up a new hobby that you can give up the next month because you got bored of it, it's taking on the responsibility for another human being for the next 20 years. This is a very important decision that will change your life and should not be taken it lightly. The fact that the previous generation were "yol…

I'm not arguing that. But it never occur to me that e.g. being a homeowner should be a prerequisite. My parents weren't and neither most everyone else's in my generation. I was still renting when my first child was born. Also to me people give undue importance to things like climbing the corporate ladder. Most don't get far enough for the pay to finally match the responsibility, as there's simply too few positions to…

> I'm not arguing that.

> Meanwhile my parents' generation would essentially yolo people into this world, sometimes by accident. We've become too cautious for our own good.

But you are arguing that.

> But it never occur to me that e.g. being a homeowner should be a prerequisite. My parents weren't and neither most everyone else's in my generation. I was still renting when my first child was born.

I was not talking about homeownership, I was talking about making a rational decision to have a child or more as in weighing the pros an cons.

People these days want what is best for their kids. So they take their time, they think about it and eventually delay or abandon the idea altogether if they are not sure that this is the right one. It's that simple.

It's well and good to YOLO people into this world if you have an amazing job and low chance of being made redundant but if your situation looks even a tiny bit precarious then you are going to think a lot about it because that is the rational way of doing things.

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