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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

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Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#121

Post by internetter »

anonymars wrote: post #66
mothballed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Social Security system relies on creating a debt of unborn children to older people based on those older people having already paid now dead people, so keeping it solvent requires more meat for the tax machine. A pyramid inversion means the old keep voting for OPM from the young, using their numbers to crush them, meanwhile there are fewer and fewer young to actually pay it. Eventually creating instability, coupl…

Mentioning Social Security and government implies there is some other form of retirement that doesn't inherently depend on younger people still working, doesn't it? I mean, who else going to grow the food and sweep the streets?

(I am a social democrat, not a libertarian) All models require to some extent the youth working, but not all require a part of the youth's fruits of their labour being taken and put into social security. A libertarian might say that the onus is on the boomers to save enough money to fund their own retirement so that they're not reliant on the social security safety net.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#122

Post by kingofmen »

anonymars wrote: post #66
mothballed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Social Security system relies on creating a debt of unborn children to older people based on those older people having already paid now dead people, so keeping it solvent requires more meat for the tax machine. A pyramid inversion means the old keep voting for OPM from the young, using their numbers to crush them, meanwhile there are fewer and fewer young to actually pay it. Eventually creating instability, coupl…

Mentioning Social Security and government implies there is some other form of retirement that doesn't inherently depend on younger people still working, doesn't it? I mean, who else going to grow the food and sweep the streets?

Forms of retirement that don't have the force of law can be adjusted on the fly to match the available resources. When the government forcibly requires that each elderly person be paid a fixed amount of resources yearly, it's possible for there to be literally zero surplus for the young people making the resources. That can't happen under systems where the transfers are voluntary.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#123

Post by ashishb »

phainopepla2 wrote: post #54
ashishb wrote: post #47

New Yorker has a detailed article on this phenomenon that's a great read. It busts many common myths. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population...

What are some of the myths they bust in that article? For those of us who can't see past the paywall

One really common that myth this article busts is about child care.

"Child care is virtually free in Vienna and extremely expensive in Zurich, but the Austrians and the Swiss have the same fertility rate."

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#124

Post by dh2022 »

bombcar wrote: post #74
llm_nerd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong If you're demanding it be all-or-nothing, then sure it is "wrong". It obviously isn't the only reason. As countries get richer, people have fewer kids. Is it a factor? Of course it is . Children are incredibly expensive if you subscribe to modern norms and expectations. There are many, many, many people who want kids but can't afford it, and i…

> expectations around having and raising a child are very, very different from someone sixty years ago This is at the root of "it's too expensive" - what are in the "needs" column has vastly changed. It is very likely that if you want a large family, one spouse (usually the mother) is going to have to stay at home, or at most work very part time - at least until all kids are into school. The costs otherwise simply do…

Your post implies that costs for raising kids stop when the kids are in school. Your post did not include costs for college - which is becoming a norm for a lot of people. Un-subscribing from the idea of giving your kids college education is a bad decision.....

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#125

Post by pessimizer »

tantalor wrote: post #88
andrewla wrote: post #53

The article is paywalled but it seems the gist is that by restricting immigration and escalating deportation, we risk population decrease. What I find amusing about this is that it is roughly equivalent to saying that the United States needs to conquer new territory to survive. Need to bring more people under our thumb. This is definitely "dying empire" thinking. Worth saying that I do not agree with this. I think in…

The recent episode of The Daily gives a prime example of this, I was seeing people getting hired and getting paid a lot less than me. And when I inquired about it, my boss would say, well, they’re less expensive. I don’t have to pay workman’s comp on them. I don’t have to pay general liability insurance on them. If they get hurt, they’ll go to the emergency room. No sweat off my back. And I was getting paid less and…

Wanting them gone isn't the same as putting the blame on them. It isn't a personality conflict or a troubled relationship; immigrants shouldn't feel guilty for wanting to stay and the people competing with them should feel guilty for wanting them to go. Or rather, who cares? Shouldn't people be allowed to have their inner states to themselves? Can't we own anything? How did a discussion about labor exploitation turn into a discussion about feelings?

And why is it a discussion about some workers' feelings vs. other workers' feelings? How did the boss manage to completely recuse himself?

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#126

Post by gadders »

someperson wrote: post #42
gadders wrote: post #6

Sounds hellish. "His administration is focused on delivering on his promise to reduce the immigrant population and argues, despite the protestations of economists, that doing so will mean greater opportunities and wages for native-born workers and will reduce the cost of everything from housing to health care by reducing demand. “There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President…

I wish there were more reasoned debate and distinguishing between legal immigration including tech workers (H-1B visas) versus illegal immigration for eg food truck workers, DoorDash scooter drivers. Also the lack of knowledge about the existence of the fantastic and generous H-2A visa for farm workers is maddening.

H1B is just a cheap labour scam unless you think there aren't any Americans that could do the jobs on the jobs.now website that reposts the H1B re-advertisements.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#127

Post by bombcar »

dbspin wrote: post #89
stackskipton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like when you give women the choice, many elect to have fewer kids than replacement level. Hell, in many countries in Europe, they basically throw money at anyone having kids and their birthrate has plummeted which would indicate that economics is not only reason.

I don't think there's a country in Europe that funds childcare remotely to the level of cost. The most generous I'm aware of is certain states / cities in Germany that provide free 'Kita', essentially Kindergarten. In addition to maternity leave, national insurance etc. But this certainly doesn't cover the numerous costs (including time off work etc) associated with having kids. Would be an interesting experiment to…

We do pay people to have kids in the USA - once you're on welfare. Your WIC and EBT allowances go up per kid.

And even if you're not that poor, you get subsidized kids through things like the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. It's annoying that while some of those support 3+ kids, many "top out" at three and stop increasing.

I've often thought of searching for "sponsorships" for additional children (though we'd probably have them anyway) - not sure I want my son to be named Facebook X AI though ;)

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#129

Post by reliabilityguy »

throwawayohio wrote: post #85

Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might ju…

With all due respect, but this extremely biased and US-centric view. IT was not easier to have kids in 2024 or 2023, both in the EU or US. Childcare is expensive, pace of life today (and the past 20 years at least) implicitly treats kids as a liability and a detriment to career progression and financial security.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#130

Post by pjc50 »

wcoenen wrote: post #104
GiorgioG wrote: post #2

Maybe if young folks could afford housing they'd have kids...there's a thought.

This comes up in every discussion about demographics. But counterintuitively, there are no examples of financial incentives actually fixing this problem. For example, in 2022 Hungary was spending 6.2% of GDP on such incentives[1], but this only managed to bring total fertility rate up to about 1.6 [2]. It is the same everywhere else. The real reason fertility has declined since the sixties is because people have acce…

Back of an envelope suggests that to really make this work you'd need most women in the 20-40 range to have the job title of "parent" and a lower middle class or more salary paid by the state, so .. 10-20% of GDP? Nobody wants to contemplate just how expensive this is going to be, including the fact that now you have a short-term labour shortage (because they're out of the regular workforce as well!)
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