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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

#131

Post by myrmidon »

llm_nerd wrote: post #40
myrmidon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong, and not even plausible (anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings, and they could not even afford proper sunday shoes for all of them, much less current living standards). I think the biggest impact is from kids being obsolete/net negative as both workforce (when young) and retirement scheme (when the parents are old). But there is no reverting…

>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…

I'd argue that those higher standards/costs for raising children are the effect and not the cause.

We (need to) invest more into their education because uneducated children/adults have little or even negative value as workers (especially to their parents), this was not the case two centuries ago.

Children appear to be a "luxury" nowadays because there is no longer any expectation that they "net contribute" to their family economically (might be a positive change ethics-wise, but this is a huge shift in incentives for parents).

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

#132

Post by supertrope »

sandworm101 wrote: post #84
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need young people to pay for old people retirement (economically speaking, someone has to be working when someone else is just eating).

If they were only eating there would be no problem. But they want fancy vacations. They want houses. They need drugs. They need MRI machines. And they need these things for decades for minimal cost irrespective of ability to pay. And, when they do die, they expect to pass estates tax-free to thier children. Supporting the retired population is one thing, but the day may soon come when we revisit what it means to be r…

If you want to punch up try aiming higher than the upper-middle class. Other countries have MRIs and drugs as part of universal healthcare.

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

#133

Post by spprashant »

jdlyga wrote: post #68

Once you have a kid, it's obvious why even besides the costs involved. There's not much sense of community, particularly in the white middle class. People are very individualistic and distrusting of others. There's a good reason for some of this, but to have a community you need to be a community member. And that means letting people in, trusting others and being trustworthy, and being out for the group instead of ju…

Yeah I think the meritocracy pushed by America is at least in part responsible for this. Social validation for being a high-performing employee is much greater, than for being a member of the community.

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

#134

Post by oklahomasports »

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…

[flagged]

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

#135

Post by compounding_it »

My darwinian theory:

About 11 years ago I went on a bus in Rochester, NY. It was bizarre to me that every person in the bus (about 12-15 people aged between 18-25 maybe) were buried in their phones. No one was talking to each other, not looking outside, nothing. I had the latest iPhone but since America was new for me I mostly spent time looking at the world around me and talking to people. I felt sad that the social world had come to this.

Fast forward to now and this is what I see in India too. Talking to random people in their prime years (maybe 18-30) is now 'weird'. But it's perfectly fine if it's via 'insta' or 'snap'. I can't imagine how much worse it's now in America in that age group. I know my pre teen nephews have withdrawals if I take away their devices here in India.

The moral here is that procreation requires better social skills and strong presence in the world and good parenting will probably create that. In order to raise an offspring, people need to have good mental health and that generally leads to good physical health which in turn improves the mental health and so on which can lead to procreation etc. The scrolling and virtual world is a distraction from reality. Something that keeps away humans from each other. We will only see this getting worse. In India the social world is still good enough to see higher birth rates. But that is also now slowing down. Mental health of people is not great. People complain about being single but there is virtually no way to hold a conversation as getting their attention is impossible. Phones are glued to their eyes and hands even when sitting with you.

I am hoping though things will be different in the future.

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

#136

Post by koolba »

ryandrake wrote: post #102

If the US wants to increase its population, maybe it should stop sending masked agents out to kick in doors, directly reducing the population.

The US has endless backlog of people waiting in line to legally enter the country. It doesn’t need to keep any illegal aliens to meet its immigration goals.

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

#137

Post by dh2022 »

actionfromafar wrote: post #25
myrmidon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong, and not even plausible (anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings, and they could not even afford proper sunday shoes for all of them, much less current living standards). I think the biggest impact is from kids being obsolete/net negative as both workforce (when young) and retirement scheme (when the parents are old). But there is no reverting…

Contraceptives will be harder to get. Project 2025 is also about stopping the "senseless use of birth control pills".

Well, they can do whatever they want in their red-states. Blue states are already moving healthcare away from federal non-sense standards [0] and [1]

[0] https://governor.wa.gov/news/2025/washington-california-and-...

[1]https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside-mdhhs/newsroom/2026/01...

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

#138

Post by mamonster »

dv_dt wrote: post #7
plaguna wrote: post #3

Maybe they should have a look to what other countries are doing. [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/27/spain-decree-r...

The interesting thing is this is Spain's second wave of doing this, and the economic studies on the first wave of it showed visibly positive results. Spain's economy moved in growth, and with a size larger than many other European nations in similar background conditions of flat to negative population growth, but tighter immigration allowances.

Horrible fiscal ticking time bomb that ignores the fact that regularization means naturalization over the next 10-15 years and so access to EU healthcare system.

The biggest drag on government budgets in EU are socialized healthcare and retirement costs. At this point we know healthcare costs are severely backloaded, with most spending coming out of the last 10 years of someone's life. Regularizing now allows them to show a fiscal boost now and for next 4-5 years(edit: maybe even like 10-15 years) and accumulate a massive liability as they age.

Think about it this way: If you regularize a 30 year old illegal migrant right now with a path to citizenship over next 10-15 years, the government NPV is positive over a 15 year horizon(whilst he works) and then will go flat to negative as he starts using the healthcare system whilst retired.

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

#139

Post by bombcar »

b0rtb0rt wrote: post #107
jdlyga wrote: post #68

Once you have a kid, it's obvious why even besides the costs involved. There's not much sense of community, particularly in the white middle class. People are very individualistic and distrusting of others. There's a good reason for some of this, but to have a community you need to be a community member. And that means letting people in, trusting others and being trustworthy, and being out for the group instead of ju…

this really depends on where you live. i’m in an extremely safe family oriented suburb, there’s lot of community, kids have freedom to go outside, good friends with lots of neighbors and parents, my social life is busier than it was when i didn’t have kids.

I'd say (and this is painful for many) that it really depends on who you are and how you act - if you're outgoing, or force yourself to pretend to be, and you talk, and you listen, and you don't immediately judge people (by whatever metric you come up with) - you can build community anywhere

Is it easier if you're in a group of tightly-knit people all nearly identical to you? Sure! But it's possible with work anywhere that has any population at all.

Social media and the Internet have let us self-select for "friends" who are as close to us as possible, there's ease because of the lack of friction, but that same lack of friction prevents our rough edges from being sanded off.

The number of people who could list what they want in a community, and when presented with a community that matches their list, cry that it votes wrong is way too high, just as an example.

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

#140

Post by supertrope »

Sol- wrote: post #64
queuebert wrote: post #16

Why do we obsess over growing everything all the time?

Because progress and growth makes us wealthier and happier? It's pretty simple. People say "Oh, but GDP isn't everything" - but it's correlated with almost everything good, so might as well be.

This. The prospect of a brighter future at least means capital and labor are fighting for slices of a bigger pie. If the pie per capita stays constant or shrinks there will be a lot more anti-social behavior to response to the zero-sum environment.
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