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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

#191

Post by rdm_blackhole »

spacemadness wrote: post #180
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…

Exactly. "Pouring money" is what, a one-time $2000 payment? How is that going to get anywhere near balancing what you've already described. Unfortunately most politicians seem very out of touch and are just there to keep the status quo.

In France, you get a couple hundred euros each month per child and I am there thinking, so what, that will barely cover the cost of the diapers.

The government is not going to give you more money to rent a bigger place or buy a bigger house so then you need to factor in those expenses as well not to mention the partial and sometime total loss of income of 1 adult for the first 2/3 years of the life of the child.

The math just doesnt work.

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

#192

Post by joquarky »

Ekaros wrote: post #73
JKCalhoun wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's how society will break down without a younger generation in quantity that is paying for social security, earning taxes for society, etc.

Oh well, just have to accept that there won't be retirement, only burning your savings and then euthanasia. Better have fun while you can afford it.

That sounds like a rational strategy to me.

Counting on a retirement takes faith.

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

#193

Post by rdm_blackhole »

spicyusername wrote: post #59

Everyone is going to want to reach for their favorite modern problem, but every point in history is fraught with sociopolitical and economic challenges. Today is not special, in that regard. My personal favorite reason is just that this is the outcome of birth control. At no other point in history could people decide how many kids they want, and when you give people the choice, they just aren't going to choose very m…

Is it possible that many people simply fail to acknowledge that for one, not everyone wants to be a parent and two, if given the choice between a new car or a vacation in the Bahamas every few years and having kids, people will most likely choose the car and/or the holiday?

It is also possible that many young women have seen what the previous generation lived through with "stay at home" spouses and decided to opt out? Who could blame them really?

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

#194

Post by rdm_blackhole »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #119
rdm_blackhole wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lower birthrates are also happening in countries like Sweden/Finland/Norway where higher education is "free" and healthcare is also "free" so those are not the reasons why women opt out of motherhood, or at least not the complete reasons anyway. The trend is global so the main reason is most likely something global. In this case couldn't it be simply that motherhood is no longer attractive to women and they want…

My read of your first paragraph is that despite quality of life in the Nordic countries being overall better, it’s still not enough to offset the sacrifices associated with becoming parents. If you frame this from an economical standpoint, there simply isn’t a single country in the world that adequately compensates parents (especially mothers) for the costs of raising children. These costs are numerous and not just f…

> Simply put, if we want people to raise families it needs to make economical sense to do so. What exactly that looks like can be debated, but it’s likely something along the lines of one of the parents receiving a midrange part time or full time paycheck (depending on if they decide to stay at home or not) on top of the other parent being able to work an hour or two less each day without taking a hit to their paycheck.

I agree with your general comment but this type of incentive for parenthood basically turns into a tax for single/childless/infertile people.

The money has to come from somewhere at the end of the day. So you need to raise more tax revenue but how?

The big corps will exploit the tax loopholes, the 1% will emigrate to more tax friendly countries and you'll be left with a lots of single/childless/infertile people paying a hefty bill to subsidize other families so that the country can have a bigger working population 25 years after the fact.

I just don't see how this is feasible politically in any way.

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

#195

Post by viridian »

pjc50 wrote: post #63
harshreality wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes asking people will give you true insight, and sometimes it will give you false insight because the people themselves don't consciously know and make things up that seem right but are not; or, a behavior or decision is the product of a chain of other things that's too complex to reason about or communicate easily even if each link in the chain is consciously known. On South Korea, you might want to consider…

I deliberately chose the population number graph rather than the birth rate graph because that's the one that actually affects resource usage (housing etc), rather than its first derivative. If the numbers start dropping to the extent that opportunities open up, I believe that people's views might start changing. We see localized depopulation of e.g. small Italian or Japanese villages as the local economy dries up. B…

You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. The median age is 45.6 and rapidly rising. All of these people can't decide to adapt to market conditions and have children. The population crash is almost inevitable unless SK breaks free of population-wide human behaviors and goes from having less than 1 child per couple to having 6.

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

#196

Post by viridian »

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…

birth rates are below replacement in the majority of countries now. Global birth rate is down to 2.24 this year, and 2.11 is the baseline for maintaining the population. I'd bet a tremendous amount of money that we cross the threshold by 2030.

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

#197

Post by benhurmarcel »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #191
spacemadness wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. "Pouring money" is what, a one-time $2000 payment? How is that going to get anywhere near balancing what you've already described. Unfortunately most politicians seem very out of touch and are just there to keep the status quo.

In France, you get a couple hundred euros each month per child and I am there thinking, so what, that will barely cover the cost of the diapers. The government is not going to give you more money to rent a bigger place or buy a bigger house so then you need to factor in those expenses as well not to mention the partial and sometime total loss of income of 1 adult for the first 2/3 years of the life of the child. The…

> In France, you get a couple hundred euros each month per child

Starting with the second child. You don’t get anything for the first.

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

#198

Post by pjc50 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #134
pjc50 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual one is "availability of contraception and related education for women". I don't think even the fundamentalist states have chosen to and managed to reverse that. Least feminist most collapsed country Afghanistan is still falling: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/AFG/afg... We still don't know what a "modern depopulated country" might look like, that is a whole country where the population…

Plausible. But what about sub-Saharan Africa? Do they not have access to birth control? (Or are they falling too, just started later?)

Much less so, it's extremely poor and more likely to be starvation or war limited. But even there it's going down.

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

#199

Post by cosmic_cheese »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #194
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read of your first paragraph is that despite quality of life in the Nordic countries being overall better, it’s still not enough to offset the sacrifices associated with becoming parents. If you frame this from an economical standpoint, there simply isn’t a single country in the world that adequately compensates parents (especially mothers) for the costs of raising children. These costs are numerous and not just f…

> Simply put, if we want people to raise families it needs to make economical sense to do so. What exactly that looks like can be debated, but it’s likely something along the lines of one of the parents receiving a midrange part time or full time paycheck (depending on if they decide to stay at home or not) on top of the other parent being able to work an hour or two less each day without taking a hit to their payche…

I don’t have any answers, but it’s a fact that society is going to have to confront sooner or later.

Perhaps the main thing that needs to occur is a reframing of the issue. The only reason why a tax on the single/childless/infertile to support families is untenable is due to individualist thinking, but we’re all heavily dependent on society, and if children are required for society to continue to function that makes the tax a no-brainer except for the most staunch of doomers and anti-natalists. It’s functionally not that different from all the other ways people indirectly benefit from spending tax dollars.

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

#200

Post by bryanlarsen »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #194
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read of your first paragraph is that despite quality of life in the Nordic countries being overall better, it’s still not enough to offset the sacrifices associated with becoming parents. If you frame this from an economical standpoint, there simply isn’t a single country in the world that adequately compensates parents (especially mothers) for the costs of raising children. These costs are numerous and not just f…

> Simply put, if we want people to raise families it needs to make economical sense to do so. What exactly that looks like can be debated, but it’s likely something along the lines of one of the parents receiving a midrange part time or full time paycheck (depending on if they decide to stay at home or not) on top of the other parent being able to work an hour or two less each day without taking a hit to their payche…

> a tax for single/childless/infertile people.

Taxes on other people's kids pay for childless people's retirement, so isn't it fair that childless people help pay for other people's kids?

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